JV  6455  .R82 

Ross,  Edward  Alsworth 

The  old  world  in  the  new 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 
in  2015 


littps://arcliive.org/details/oldworldinnewsigOOross 


THE  OLD  WORLD 
IN  THE  NEW 


Towards  the  New  World 


THE  OLD  WORLD 
IN  THE  NEW 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  PAST  AND  PRESENT 
IMMIGRATION  TO  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

FEB  23  19 

EDWARD  ALSWORTH  ROSS,  Ph.D.,  LL.D><££^'fG/t.  ^ 
Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin 
Author  of  "Social  Control, "  "Social  Psychology," 
"The  Changing  Chinese,"  "Changing 
America,"  Etc. 


ILLUSTRATED  WITH 
MANY  PHOTOGRAPHS 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 
1914 


Copyright,  1913,  1914,  hy 

The  Cextuhy  Co. 


Published,  October,  1914 


PEEFACE 


Immigration, "  said  to  me  a  distinguished 
social  worker  and  idealist,  **is  a  wind  that  blows 
democratic  ideas  throughout  the  world.  In  a 
Siberian  hut  from  which  four  sons  had  gone  forth 
to  America  to  seek  their  fortune,  I  saw  tacked  up 
a  portrait  of  Lincoln  cut  from  a  New  York  news- 
paper. Even  there  they  knew  what  Lincoln  stood 
for  and  loved  him.  The  return  flow  of  letters  and 
people  from  this  country  is  sending  an  electric 
thrill  through  dwarfed,  despairing  sections  of 
humanity.  The  money  and  leaders  that  come 
back  to  these  down-trodden  peoples  inspire  in 
them  a  great  impulse  toward  liberty  and  democ- 
racy and  progress.  Time-hallowed  Old-World 
oppressions  and  exploitations  that  might  have 
lasted  for  generations  will  perish  in  our  time, 
thanks  to  the  diffusion  by  immigrants  of  American 
ideas  of  freedom  and  opportunity." 

Rapt  in  these  visions  of  benefit  to  belated  hu- 
manity, my  friend  refused  to  consider  any  pos- 
sible harm  of  immigration  to  this  country.  He 
did  not  doubt  it  so  much  as  ignore  it.  How  should 
the  well-being  of  a  nation  be  balanced  against  a 
blessing  to  humanity? 

"Think  what  American  chances  mean  to  these 
poor  people!"  urged  a  large-hearted  woman  in 
settlement  work.  ''Thousands  make  shipwreck, 
other  thousands  are  disappointed,  but  tens  of 
thousands  do  realize  something  of  the  better, 


PEEFACE 


larger  life  they  liad  dreamed  of.  Who  would  ex- 
clude any  of  them  if  he  but  knew  what  a  land  of 
promise  America  is  to  the  poor  of  other  lands!" 
Her  sympathy  with  the  visible  alien  at  the  gate 
was  so  keen  that  she  had  no  feeling  for  the  in- 
visible children  of  our  poor,  who  will  find  the 
chances  gone,  nor  for  those  at  the  gate  of  the 
To-be,  who  might  have  been  bom,  but  will  not  be. 

I  am  not  of  those  who  consider  humanity 
and  forget  the  nation,  who  pity  the  living  but  not 
the  unborn.  To  me,  those  who  are  to  come  after 
us  stretch  forth  beseeching  hands  as  well  as  the 
masses  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe.  Nor  do  I 
regard  America  as  something  to  be  spent  quickly 
and  cheerfully  for  the  benefit  of  pent-up  millions 
in  the  backward  lands.  What  if  we  become 
crowded  without  their  ceasing  to  be  so  ?  I  regard 
it  as  a  nation  whose  future  may  be  of  unspeakable 
value  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  provided  that  the 
easier  conditions  of  life  here  be  made  permanent 
by  high  standards  of  living,  institutions  and 
ideals,  which  finally  may  be  appropriated  by  all 
men.  We  could  have  helped  the  Chinese  a  little 
by  letting  their  surplus  millions  swarm  in  upon 
us  a  generation  ago ;  but  we  have  helped  them  in- 
finitely more  by  protecting  our  standards  and 
having  something  worth  their  copying  when  the 
time  came. 

Edwaed  Alswoeth  Ross. 

The  University  of  Wisconsin, 
Madison,  Wisconsin, 
September,  1914. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  3 
Traits  of  the  Puritan  stock — Elements  in  the  peopling 
of  Virginia — The  indentured  servants  and  convicts — 
Purification  by  free  land — The  Huguenots — The  Germans 
— The  Scotch-Irish — Ruling  motives  in  the  peopling  of  the 
NevF  World — Selective  agencies — The  toll  of  the  sea — The 
sifting  by  the  wilderness — The  impress  of  the  frontier — 
How  an  American  Breed  arose — Its  traits. 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  CELTIC  IRISH  24 

The  great  lull — The  Hibernian  tide — Why  it  has  run  low 
— Effects  on  Ireland — Irish-Americans  in  the  struggle  for 
existence — Their  improvidence  and  unthrift — Why  they 
lacked  the  economic  virtues — Drink  their  worst  foe — 
Their  small  criminality — Loyalty  to  wife  and  child — 
Their  occupational  preferences — Their  rapid  rise — 
Their  rank  in  intellectual  contribution — Celtic  traits — 
Place  of  the  Irish  in  American  society. 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  GERMANS  '  46 

Volume  and  causes  of  the  German  freshet — Why  it  has 
ceased — Distribution  of  the  Germans  in  America— 
Deutschtum  vs.  assimilation — The  "Forty-eighters" — 
Influence  of  the  Germans  on  our  farming,  on  our  drink- 
ing, on  our  attitude  toward  recreation — Political  tend- 
encies of  German  voters — The  Germans  as  pathbreakers 
for  intellectual  liberty — Their  success  in  the  struggle  for 
existence — Moderation  in  alcoholism  and  in  crime — Pre- 
ferred occupations — Teutonic  traits — Effect  of  the  Ger- 
man infusion  on  the  temper  of  the  American  people. 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SCANDINAVIANS  67 

The  size  of  the  Scandinavian  wave — Distribution  of  this 
element  in  the  United  States — Social  characteristics — 
Crime  and  alcoholism — Occupational  choices — Readiness 
of  assimilation — Reaction  to  America — National  con- 
trasts among  Scandinavians — Intellectual  rating — Race 
traits — Moral  and  political  significance  of  the  Scandi- 
navians. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  V 

PAGE 

THE  ITALIANS  95 

Causes  of  the  Italian  outflow — Distribution  of  Italians 
— Social  characteristics — Broad  contrast  between  North 
Italians  and  South  Italians — Occupations — Agricultural 
settlements — Freedom  from  alcoholism — Gaming — Addic- 
tion to  violence — Camorra  and  Mafia  in  America — Diffi- 
culties in  dealing  with  Italian  immigrants — Their  mental 
rating — Traits  of  character — The  Italians  as  a  social 
element. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SLAVS  120 

Place  of  the  Slavs  in  history — Lateness  of  their  awaken- 
ing— Size  of  the  Slav  groups  in  America — Occupational 
tendencies  of  the  Slavic  immigrants — Distribution — Al- 
coholism— Criminality — Subjection  of  women — Extraor- 
dinary fecundity — Displacement  of  other  elements — 
Resistance  to  Americanization — Clannishness — Social 
characteristics  of  Slav  settlements — Industrial  segrega- 
tion— Mental  rating — Prospects  of  Slavic  immigration. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  143 

One-fifth  of  the  Hebrew  race  in  America — "The  Prom- 
ised Land" — Hebrew  interest  in  free  immigration — 
Waves  of  Russo-Hebrew  immigration — Occupational  pref- 
erences— Morals — Crime — Race  traits — Intellectuality — 
Persistence  of  will — Gro'wth  of  Anti-Semitism  in  Amer- 
ica— Causes — Prospects — Why  America  is  a  powerful  sol- 
vent of  Judaism — Signs  of  Assimilation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  168 

African,  Saracen  and  Mongolian  blood  in  our  immi- 
grants— The  Finns — Motives  and  characteristics — Politi- 
cal aptitude — Patriotism — The  Magyars — Social  condition 
and  traits — The  Portuguese — Origin  and  voliune  of  the 
Portuguese  influx — Distribution — Industrial  and  social 
characteristics — Resistance  to  assimilation — The  Greeks 
— Immigration  from  Greece  purely  economic — Distribu- 
tion and  occupational  preferences — Serfdom  of  Greek 
boot-blacks — The  Levantines — Racial  and  social  char- 
acteristics. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  IX 

PAGE 

ECONOMIC  CONSEQUENCES  OF  IJOIIGRATION  .  .  .195 
Stimulators  of  migration — The  commercial  interests  be- 
hind the  movement — Tlie  new  immigrant  as  an  indus- 
trial tool — How  tariff  protection  coupled  with  the  open 
door  augment  the  manufacturer's  profits — Effect  of  the 
new  immigration  upon  the  cost  of  living,  upon  agricul- 
tural metliods — Shall  tlie  penniless  immigrant  be  helped 

to  get  upon  the  land  The  utilization  of  foreign  labor 

to  break  strikes — The  foreign  laborer  as  a  hindrance  to 

unionism  Effect  upon  wages  and  conditions — Is  the 

foreigner  indispensable — Immigrant  women  doing  men's 
work — Fate  of  the  displaced  American — Immigration  and 
crises — The  inevitable  rise  of  social  pressure — Who  bears 
the  brunt? 

CHAPTER  X 

SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IM]\IIGRATION  228 

Immigration  and  social  atavism — Community  reversions 
to  the  Middle  Ages — Immigrant  illiteracy  and  ignorance 
— New  readers  of  the  yellow  press — The  spread  of  white 
peonage — Caste  cleavage — Attitude  of  the  foreign-born 
toward  the  claims  of  women — Split-family  immigration 
and  the  social  evil — How  immigration  makes  acute  the 
housing  problem — Why  overgrown  cities — Immigrants 
who  discount  our  charities — The  wayward  child  of  the 
immigrant — Insanity  among  the  foreign-born — Obstruc- 
tions to  the  operation  of  the  public  school — Signs  of 
social  decline — Peasantism  vs.  social  progress. 

CHAPTER  XI 

IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  259 

The  Hibernian  domination  of  Northern  cities — Political 
psychology  of  the  Celts — Practical  consequences — Immi- 
gration as  foe  to  party  traditionalism — Citizenship  of 
the  new  immigrants  compared  with  the  old — Accumula- 
tion of  voteless  men — How  this  lessens  the  political 
strength  of  labor — Psychology  of  the  ignorant  natural- 
ized immigrants — How  the  cunning  boss  acquires  "influ- 
ence"— Feudal  relation  between  the  boss  and  his  humble 
constituents — Naturalization  frauds — The  Tammany  way 
— The  political  machine — The  liquor  interest  and  the  for- 
eign-born voter — The  foreign  press  in  politics — The  cost 
of  losing  political  like-mindedness — Political  mysticism 
vs.  common  sense. 

CHAPTER  XII 

A]MERICAN  BLOOD  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  .     .  .282 
Submergence  of  the  pioneering  breed — Growing  hetero- 
geneity— Primitive  types  among  the  foreign-born — How 


CONTENTS 


immigration  will  afTpct  p;ood  looks  in  this  country — Ef- 
fect of  crossiiif!;  on  jicrsoinil  hcauty — Stature  and  phys- 
ique of  the  new(M-  niuiii}^raiit« — Do  tliev  revitalize  the 


atocics — Are  tiie  immifjrants  <;oo(l  samples  of  tlieir  own 
people — Appraisal  of  the  (lill'erent  ethnie  strains  in  the 
American  peo])le — Katinp  of  present  immigrant  streams 
— TIow  immifiratinn  has  all'eeted  tlie  feeun(iity  of  Amer- 
icans— Evadinfj  a  (lejiradinp;  competition  hy  race  suici<l(! 
— Tlie  triumph  of  the  low-standard  elements  over  the 
high-standard  elements. 


morals  of  the  South  European 


APPENDIX 


307 


INDEX 


321 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


Towards  the  New  World  Frontispiece 

Immigrant  Women  in  Line  for  Inspection  at  Ellia  Island  .  6 

Slovaks,  Ellis  Island  15 

Distribution  of  Irish  and  Natives  of  Irish  Parentage — 1910  38 

Distribution  of  Germans  and  Natives  of  German  Parentage — 

1910  55 

Distribution  of  Scandinavians  and  Natives  of  Scandinavian 

Parentage — 1910  78 

Typical  Norwegian  Boy  87 

Typical  Swedish  Girl  87 

Distribution  of  Italians  and  natives  of  Italian  Parentage 

—1910  94 

Italian  Gypsy  Mother  and  Child  100 

Italian  Woman  of  Greek  or  Albanian  Ancestry  ....  100 

Group  of  Italian  Immigrants  Luncliing  in  Old  Railroad  Wait- 
ing Room,  Ellis  Island  109 

Board  of  Special  Inquiry,  Ellis  Island  115 

Utter  Weariness — Bohemian  Woman  on  East  Side,  New  York, 

after  the  Day's  Work  115 

Slav  Sisters   122 

Slovak  Girl   122 

Slav  Woman  and  Italian  Husband   131 

Slovak  Girls   131 

Russian  Jews,  Ellis  Island   142 

Hindoo  Immigrants   142 

Slovak  Woman  and  Jewish  Man,  Ellis  Island   151 

Jewish  Girl  in  Chicago  Sweat-Shop   151 

Jewish  Runner  Soliciting  Immigrants  for  the  Steamship  Com- 
pany  162 

Magyar  171 

Croatian  171 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 


Roumanian   171 

Croatians  Celebrating  Their  Going  Home  to  the  "Old  Country"  178 

Roumanian  Couple  in  Gala  Attire,  Youngstown,  Ohio  .     .  178 

Magyar  Peasant  Woman   186 

Molokan  from  Russia   186 

A  Finnish  Woman  by  Her  Cabin  of  Hewn  Logs  in  Northern 

Wisconsin  near  Lake  Superior  191 

Some  of  Syracuse's  Newer  Citizens — A  Greek  and  Two  Turks  191 

Sunday  Group  of  Roumanian  Street  Workers,  Youngstown, 
Ohio  199 

Sunday  Roumanians,  Youngstown;  Ohio  199 

The  Unemployed — Middle  of  the  Morning,  Chicago  .     .     .  206 

"Shack"  of  a  Polish  Iron  Miner,  Hibbing,  Minn  211 

Cabin  of  an  Austrian  Iron  Miner,  Virginia,  Minn.  .     .  .211 

Immigrant  Girls  Coming  to  Work  in  the  Early  Morning  at 

the  Union  Stockyards  217 

Polish  Girls  Washing  Dishes  Under  the  Sidewalk  in  a  Chicago 

Restaurant  217 

Roumanian  Shepherds  in  Native  Costume,  Ellis  Island  .     .  224 

Distribution  of  Foreign-born  Whites  in  the  United  States — 

1910  241 

Dependent  Italian  Family,  Cleveland   248 

Dependent  Slovak  Family,  Cleveland   248 

Italian  Men's  Civic  Club,  Rochester,  N.  Y   257 

A  Civic  Banquet  to  "New  Citizens,"  July  4th   268 

Y.  M.  C.  A.  Class  of  Slovenes  in  English  Visiting  a  Session  of 

the  City  Council  of  Cleveland  277 

Class  of  Foreign- born  Women  ( Carinthians )  at  the  Cleve- 
land Hardware  Co.,  Cleveland,  0.,  Meeting  for  Instruction 
in  English  in  the  Factory,  Twice  a  Week  from  5  to  6.30  277 

Distribution  of  Foreign  Stock  in  the  United  States— 1910  .  284 

Distribution  of  Native  White  Stock  in  the  United  States — 

1910  301 


THE  OLD  WORLD  IN 
THE  NEW 


THE  OLD  WORLD  IN 
THE  NEW 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  OBIGINAL  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

GOD  sifted  a  whole  nation  that  He  might 
send  choice  grain  into  the  wilderness." 
So  thought  the  seventeenth  century  of  the  migra- 
tion to  Massachusetts  Bay  in  the  evil  years  of 
Charles  I;  but  what  are  we  to  think  of  it?  There 
is  to-day  so  little  sympathy  with  that  remote,  nar- 
row New  England  theocracy  that  it  is  well  to 
state  again  in  living  terms  what  part  the  coming 
of  the  best  of  the  English  Puritans  bore  in  build- 
ing up  the  American  people. 

As  history  makers,  those  who  will  suffer  loss 
and  exile  rather  than  give  up  an  ideal  that  has 
somehow  taken  hold  of  them  are  well  nigh  as  un- 
like ordinary  folk  as  if  they  had  dropped  from 
Mars.  In  every  generation  those  who  are  ca- 
pable of  heroic  devotion  to  any  ideal  whatsoever 
are  only  a  remnant.  Nine  persons  out  of  ten  in- 
cline to  the  line  of  least  resistance  or  of  greatest 
profit,  and  will  no  more  sacrifice  themselves  for 
an  ideal  than  lead  will  turn  to  a  magnet. 

3 


4 


THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


That  the  ideal  should  be  final  is  of  small  con- 
sequence. It  matters  little  whether  it  is  a  re- 
ligious tenet,  a  mode  of  worship,  a  method  of  life, 
or  a  state  of  society.  The  essential  thing  is  that 
it  stands  apart  from  the  appetites,  passions,  and 
petty  aims  that  govern  most  of  us.  Those  who 
will  face  panther  and  tomahawk  for  the  sake  of 
their  ideal  are  not  to  be  swayed  by  the  sordid 
motives  and  fitful  passions  that  lord  it  over  com- 
monplace lives.  Holding  themselves  to  be  in- 
struments for  the  fulfilment  of  some  larger  pur- 
pose, men  of  this  type  make  their  mark  upon  the 
world.  The  fathers  dedicate  themselves  to  es- 
tablishing godliness  in  the  community.  Their 
posterity  fly  to  arms  in  behalf  of  the  principle 
of  "No  taxation  without  representation."  Their 
posterity,  in  turn,  war  upon  the  liquor  traffic, 
slavery,  or  imperialism.  As  surely  as  one  quar- 
ter of  us  are  still  of  the  blood  of  the  twenty  thou- 
sand Puritans  who  sought  the  wilderness  between 
1618  and  1640,  so  surely  are  there  ideals  not  yet 
risen  above  the  horizon  that  will  inspire  Amer- 
icans in  the  generations  to  come. 

The  Dutch  settled  New  Amsterdam  from  prac- 
tical motives,  although  some  of  them  were  Wal- 
loons fleeing  oppression  in  the  Spanish  Nether- 
lands. Gain  prompted  the  peopling  of  Virginia, 
and  that  colony  received  its  share  of  human  chaff. 
The  Council  of  Virginia  early  complained  that 
**it  hurteth  to  suffer  Parents  to  disburden  them- 
selves of  lascivious  sonnes,  masters  of  bad  serv- 
ants and  wives  of  ill  husbands,  and  so  clogge  the 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  7 


business  with  such  an  idle  crue,  as  did  thrust 
themselves  in  the  last  voiage,  that  will  rather 
starve  for  hunger,  than  lay  their  hands  to  la- 
bor." 

In  1637  the  collector  of  the  port  of  London 
averred  that  "most  of  those  that  go  thither  or- 
dinarily have  no  habitation  .  .  .  and  are  better 
out  than  within  the  kingdom."  After  the  execu- 
tion of  Charles  I,  a  number  of  Royalist  families 
removed  to  Virginia  rather  than  brook  the  rule 
of  Cromwell.  This  influx  of  the  well-to-do  reg- 
isters itself  in  an  abrupt  increase  in  the  size  of 
the  land-grants  and  in  a  sudden  rise  in  the  num- 
ber of  slaves.  From  this  period  one  meets  with 
the  names  of  Randolph,  Madison,  Monroe,  Ma- 
son, Marshall,  Washington  and  many  others  that 
have  become  household  words.  On  the  whole, 
however,  the  exodus  of  noble  "Cavaliers"  to 
Virginia  is  a  myth;  for  it  is  now  generally  ad- 
mitted that  the  aristocracy  of  eighteenth-century 
Virginia  sprang  chiefly  from  "members  of  the 
country  gentry,  merchants  and  tradesmen  and 
their  sons  and  relatives,  and  occasionally  a  min- 
ister, a  physician,  a  lawyer,  or  a  captain  in  the 
merchant  service,"  fleeing  political  troubles  at 
home  or  tempted  by  the  fortunes  to  be  made  in 
tobacco. 

Less  promising  was  the  broad  substratum  that 
sustained  the  prosperity  of  the  colony.  For  fifty 
years  indentured  servants  were  coming  in  at  a 
rate  from  a  thousand  to  sixteen  hundred  a  year. 
No  doubt  many  an  enterprising  wight  of  the  Eng- 


8       THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


lisli  or  Irish  laboring-class  sold  himself  for  a  term 
into  the  tobacco-fields  in  order  to  come  within 
reach  of  beckoning  Opportunity;  but  we  know, 
too,  that  the  slums  and  alleys  were  raked  for  ma- 
terial to  stock  the  plantations.  Hard-hearted 
men  sold  dependent  kinsfolk  to  serve  in  the  col- 
onies. Kidnappers  smuggled  over  boys  and  girls 
gathered  from  the  streets  of  London  and  Bristol. 
About  1670,  no  fewer  than  ten  thousand  persons 
were  "spirited"  from  England  in  one  year.  The 
Government  was  slow  to  strike  at  the  infamous 
traffic,  for,  as  was  urged  in  Parliament,  ''the 
plantations  cannot  be  maintained  without  a  con- 
siderable number  of  white  servants." 

Dr.  Johnson  deemed  the  Americans  **a  race 
of  convicts,"  who  ** ought  to  be  content  with  any- 
thing we  allow  them  short  of  hanging."  In  the 
first  century  of  the  colonies,  gallows '-birds  were 
often  given  the  option  of  servitude  in  the  "plan- 
tations. ' '  Some  prayed  to  be  hanged  instead.  In 
1717  the  British  Government  entered  on  the  pol- 
icy of  penal  transportation,  and  thenceforth  dis- 
charged certain  classes  of  felons  upon  the  colonies 
until  the  Revolution  made  it  necessarj^  to  shunt 
the  muddy  stream  to  Botany  Bay.  New  England 
happily  escaped  these  ''seven-year  passengers," 
because  she  would  pay  little  for  them  and  because 
she  had  no  tobacco  to  serve  as  a  profitable  return 
cargo.  It  is  estimated  that  between  1750  and 
1770  twenty  thousand  British  convicts  were  ex- 
ported to  Maryland  alone,  so  that  even  the  school- 
masters there  were  mostly  of  this  stripe.  The 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  9 


colonies  bitterly  resented  such  cargoes,  but  their 
self-protective  measures  were  regularly  disal- 
lowed by  the  selfish  home  government.  American 
scholars  are  coming  to  accept  the  British  estimate 
that  about  50,000  convicts  were  marketed  on  this 
side  the  water. 

It  is  astonishing  how  quickly  this  ''yellow 
streak"  in  the  population  faded.  No  doubt  the 
worst  felons  were  promptly  hanged,  so  that  those 
transported  were  such  as  excited  the  compassion 
of  the  court  in  an  age  that  recognized  nearly  three 
hundred  capital  otfenses.  Then,  too,  the  bulk 
were  probably  the  unfortunate,  or  the  victims  of 
bad  surroundings,  rather  than  bom  malefactors. 
Under  the  regenerative  stimulus  of  opportunity, 
many  persons  reformed  and  became  good  citizens. 
A  like  purification  of  sewage  by  free  land  was 
later  witnessed  in  Australia.  The  incorrigible, 
when  they  did  not  slip  back  to  their  old  haunts, 
forsook  the  tide-water  belt  to  lead  half-savage 
lives  in  the  wilderness.  Here  they  slew  one  an- 
other or  were  strung  up  by  "regulators,"  so  that 
they  bred  their  kind  less  freely  than  the  honest. 
Thus  bad  strains  tended  to  run  out,  and  in  the 
making  of  our  people  the  criminals  had  no  share 
at  all  corresponding  to  their  original  numbers. 
Blended  with  the  dregs  from  the  rest  of  the  popu- 
lation, the  convicts  who  were  lazy  and  shiftless 
rather  than  criminal  became  progenitors  of  the 
"poor  whites,"  "crackers,"  and  " sandhillers " 
that  still  cumber  the  poorer  lands  of  the  southern 
Appalachians. 


10     THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


THE  FBENCH  HUGUENOTS 

Probably  no  stock  ever  came  here  so  gifted  and 
prepotent  as  the  French  Huguenots.  Though 
only  a  few  thousand  all  told,  their  descendants 
furnished  589  of  the  fourteen  thousand  and  more 
Americans  deemed  worthy  of  a  place  in  "Apple- 
tons'  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography."  In 
1790  only  one-half  of  one  per  cent,  of  our  people 
bore  a  French  name ;  yet  this  element  contributed 
4.2  per  cent,  of  the  eminent  names  in  our  history, 
or  eight  times  their  due  quota.  Like  the  Puri- 
tans and  the  Quakers,  the  Huguenots  were  of  an 
element  that  meets  the  test  of  fire  and  makes  su- 
preme sacrifices  for  conscience'  sake.  They  had 
the  same  afl&nity  for  ideals  and  the  same  tenacity 
of  character  as  the  founders  of  New  England, 
but  in  their  French  blood  they  brought  a  sensi- 
bility, a  fervor,  and  an  artistic  endowment  all 
their  own. 

It  was  likewise  a  sturdy  stock,  and  in  the  early 
days  of  the  settlement  it  was  no  unusual  thing 
for  parties  to  walk  from  New  Eochelle  to  church 
in  lower  New  York,  a  distance  of  twenty-three 
miles.  As  a  rule  they  walked  this  distance 
with  bare  feet,  carrying  their  shoes  in  their 
hands. 

THE  GEBMANS 

When  seeking  settlers  for  his  new  colony,  Wil- 
liam Penn  gained  much  publicity  for  it  in  Ger- 
many, where  he  had  a  wide  acquaintance.  The 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  11 


German  Pietists  responded  at  once,  and  a  stream 
of  picked  families  mingled  with  the  English 
Quakers  who  founded  the  City  of  Brotherly  Love. 
The  first  Germans  to  come  were  well-to-do  peo- 
ple. Nearly  all  had  enough  money  left  on  ar- 
rival to  pay  for  the  land  they  took  up.  In  1710, 
however,  there  arose  in  parts  of  Germany  a  veri- 
table furor  to  reach  the  New  World.  The  people 
of  the  ravaged  Palatinate  became  agitated  over 
the  lure  of  America,  and  ship  after  ship  breasted 
the  Delaware,  black  with  Palatines,  Hanoverians, 
Saxons,  Austrians,  and  Swiss.  The  cost  of  pass- 
age from  the  upper  Rhine  was  equal  to  $500  to- 
day ;  but  a  vast  number  of  penniless  Germans  got 
over  the  barrier  by  contracting  with  the  ship- 
owner to  sell  themselves  into  servitude  for  a 
term  of  years.  These  were  known  as  '*redemp- 
tioners,"  and  their  service  was  commonly  for 
from  four  to  six  years.  Before  the  Revolution 
not  fewer  than  60,000  Germans  had  debarked  at 
Philadelphia,  to  say  nothing  of  the  thousands  that 
settled  in  the  South. 

Although  not  without  a  sectarian  background, 
this  great  immigration  bears  clearly  an  economic 
impress.  The  virtues  of  the  Germans  were  the 
economic  virtues;  invariably  they  are  character- 
ized as  "quiet,  industrious,  and  thrifty."  Al- 
though Franklin  wrote,  "Those  who  come  to  us 
are  the  most  stupid  of  their  own  nation,"  he  spoke 
of  them  later,  before  a  committee  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  as  "a  people  who  brought  with  them 
the  greatest  of  all  wealth — industry  and  integrity, 


12     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


and  characters  that  have  been  superpoised  and 
developed  by  years  of  persecution."  It  is  likely 
that  the  intellectual  stagnation  of  the  Pennsylva- 
nia Germans  and  the  smallness  of  their  contribu- 
tion to  American  leadership  has  been  due  to  pie- 
tistic  contempt  for  education  rather  than  to  the 
natural  qualities  of  the  stock. 

THE  SCOTCH-IRISH 

The  flailing  of  the  clans  after  the  futile  rising 
of  1745  made  the  Scots  restless,  and  in  the  last 
twelve  years  of  the  colonial  era  20,000  Highland- 
ers sought  homes  in  America.  But  most  of  our 
Scottish  blood  came  by  way  of  Ireland.  Early 
in  the  eighteenth  century  the  discriminations  of 
Parliament  against  the  woolen  industry  of  Ire- 
land, and  against  Presbyterianism,  provoked  the 
largest  immigration  that  occurred  before  the  Rev- 
olution. The  Ulster  Presbyterians  were  de- 
scended from  Scotsmen  and  English  who  had  been 
induced  between  1610  and  1618  to  settle  in  the 
north  of  Ireland,  and  who  were,  in  Macaulay's 
judgment,  *'as  a  class,  superior  to  the  average  of 
the  people  left  behind  them."  They  cared  for 
ideas,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  outflow  there 
was  probably  less  illiteracy  in  Ulster  than  any- 
where else  in  the  world.  Entire  congregations 
came,  each  headed  by  its  pastor.  "The  whole 
North  is  in  a  ferment,"  lamented  an  Irish  arch- 
bishop in  1728.  "It  looks  as  if  Ireland  were  to 
send  all  her  inhabitants  hither,"  complained  the 
governor  of  Pennsylvania.    About  200,000  came 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  13 


over,  and  on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution  the  stock 
was  supposed  to  constitute  a  sixth  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  colonies.  They  settled  along  the 
frontier,  and  bore  the  brunt  of  the  warfare  with 
the  savage.  It  was  owing  chiefly  to  them  that  the 
Quakers  and  Germans  of  Pennsylvania  were  left 
undisturbed  to  live  up  to  their  ideals  of  peace 
and  non-resistance.  In  eminence,  the  lead  of  the 
Scotch-Irish  has  been  in  government,  exploration, 
and  war,  although  they  have  not  been  lacking  in 
contributors  to  education  and  invention.  In  art 
and  music  they  have  had  little  to  offer. 

The  outstanding  trait  of  the  Scotch-Irish  was 
will.  No  other  element  was  so  masterful  and 
contentious.  In  a  petition  directed  against  their 
immigration,  the  Quakers  characterized  them  as 
a  "pernicious  and  pugnacious  people"  who  ''ab- 
solutely want  to  control  the  province  themselves. ' ' 
The  stubbornness  of  their  character  is  probably 
responsible  for  the  unexampled  losses  in  the  bat- 
tles of  our  Civil  War.  They  fought  the  Indian, 
fought  the  British  with  great  unanimity  in  two 
wars,  and  were  in  the  front  rank  in  the  conquest 
of  the  West.  More  than  any  other  stock  has  this 
tough,  gritty  breed,  so  lacking  in  poetry  and  sen- 
•  sibility,  molded  our  national  character.  If  to- 
day a  losing  college  crew  rows  so  hard  that  they 
have  to  be  lifted  from  their  shell  at  the  end  of 
the  boat-race,  it  is  because  the  never-say-die 
Scotch-Irish  fighters  and  pioneers  have  been  the 
picturesque  and  glowing  figures  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  American  youth. 


14     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Looked  at  broadly,  the  first  peopling  of  this 
country  owes  at  least  as  much  to  the  love  of  lib- 
erty as  to  the  economic  motive.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  peoples  of  the  Old  World 
seemed  to  be  at  odds  with  one  another.  Race 
trampled  on  race,  and  the  tender  new  shoots  of 
religious  yearning  were  bruised  by  an  iron  state 
and  an  iron  church.  The  rumor  of  a  virgin  land 
where  the  oppressed  might  dwell  in  peace  drew 
together  a  population  varied,  but  rich  in  the 
spirited  and  in  idealists.  What  a  contrast  be- 
tween the  English  colonies  and  those  of  the  or- 
thodox powers!  For  the  intellectual  stagnation 
of  the  French  in  Canada,  thank  Louis  XIV,  who 
would  not  allow  Huguenots  to  settle  in  New 
France.  Spain  barred  out  the  foreigner  from  her 
colonies,  and  even  the  Spaniard  might  not  go 
thither  without  a  permit  from  the  Crown.  Here- 
tics were  so  carefully  excluded  that  in  nearly 
three  centuries  the  Inquisition  in  Mexico  put  to 
death  **only  41  unreconciled  heretics,  a  number 
surpassed  in  some  single  days  [in  Spain]  in 
Philip  II *s  time."  No  wonder  Spanish-Ameri- 
can history  shows  men  swayed  by  greed,  ambi- 
tion, pride,  or  fanaticism,  but  very  rarely  by  a 
moral  ideal. 

Let  no  one  suppose,  however,  that,  as  were  the 
original  settlers,  so  must  their  descendants  be. 
When  you  empty  a  barrel  of  fish  fry  into  a  new 
stream  there  is  a  sudden  sharpening  of  their 
struggle  for  existence.  So,  when  people  submit 
themselves  to  totally  strange  conditions  of  life, 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-TJP  17 


Death  whets  his  scythe,  and  those  who  survive  are 
a  new  kind  of  "fittest." 

THE  TOLL  OF  THE  SEA 

"Were  the  Atlantic  dried  up  to-day,  one  could 
trace  the  path  between  Europe  and  America  by 
cinders  from  our  steamers;  in  the  old  days  it 
would  have  revealed  itself  by  human  bones.  The 
conditions  of  over-sea  passage  then  brought  about 
a  shocking  elimination  of  the  weaker.  The  ships 
were  small  and  crowded,  the  cabins  close,  and  the 
voyage  required  from  six  to  ten  weeks.  "Be- 
twixt decks, ' '  writes  a  colonist,  * '  there  can  hardlie 
a  man  fetch  his  breath  by  reason  there  ariseth 
such  a  funke  in  the  night  that  it  causeth  putri- 
facation  of  the  blood  and  breedeth  disease  much 
like  the  plague." 

In  a  circular,  William  Penn  urged  those  who 
came  to  keep  as  much  upon  deck  as  may  be,  "and 
to  carry  store  of  Biie  and  Wormivood,  or  often 
sprinkle  Vinegar  about  the  Cabbin."  The  ship 
on  which  he  came  over  lost  a  third  of  its  passen- 
gers by  smallpox.  In  1639  the  wife  of  the  gover- 
nor of  Virginia  writes  that  the  ship  on  which  she 
had  come  out  had  been  "so  pestered  with  people 
and  goods  ...  so  full  of  infection  that  after  a 
while  they  saw  little  but  throwing  people  over- 
board." One  vessel  lost  130  out  of  150  souls. 
One  sixth  of  the  three  thousand  Germans  sent 
over  in  1710  perished  in  a  voyage  that  lasted  from 
January  to  June.  No  better  fared  a  shipload  of 
Huguenot  refugees  in  1686.    A  ship  that  left 


18     THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


Eotterdam  "^ith  150  Palatines  landed  fewer  than 
fifty  after  a  voyage  of  twenty-four  weeks.  In 
1738  "malignant  fever  and  flux"  left  only  105 
out  of  400  Palatines.  In  1775  a  brig  readied  New 
York,  having  lost  a  hundred  Highlanders  in  pass- 
age. It  was  estimated  that  in  the  years  1750  and 
1755  two  thousand  corpses  were  thrown  overboard 
from  the  ships  plying  out  of  Eotterdam.  In 
1756,  Mittelberger  thus  describes  the  horrors  of 
the  passage: 

During  the  voyage  there  is  aboard  these  ships  terrible 
misery,  stench,  fumes,  vomiting,  many  kinds  of  sick- 
ness, fever,  dysenterj',  scurvy,  mouth-rot,  and  the  like, 
all  of  which  come  from  old  and  sharply  salted  food  and 
meat,  also  from  very  bad  and  foul  water,  so  that  many 
die  miserably.  .  .  .  ]\Iany  hundred  people  necessarily 
perish  in  such  misery  and  must  be  cast  into  the  sea. 
The  sighing  and  crying  and  lamenting  on  board  the  ship 
continues  night  and  day. 

Thus  many  poor-conditioned  or  iU-endowed  im- 
migrants succumbed  en  route.  Those  of  greater 
resolution  stood  the  better  chance;  for  there  was 
a  striking  difference  in  fate  between  those  who 
lay  despairing  in  the  cabins  and  those  who 
dragged  themselves  every  day  to  the  life-giving 
air  of  the  deck. 

THE  srFTIJTG  BV  THE  WH^DEBSTSS 

Even  after  landing,  the  effects  of  the  voyage 
pursued  the  unfortunates.  In  1604,  De  Monts 
lost  half  his  colony  at  St.  Croix  the  first  winter. 
More  than  half  the  Pilgrims  were  dead  before 


THE  ORIGINAL  ^^LVKE-UP 


19 


the  Mayflower  left  for  home,  four  months  after 
reaching  Plymouth.  Of  the  Puritans  who  came 
to  Massachusetts  Bay  in  1629,  a  fifth  were  under 
ground  within  a  year.  Of  the  1500  who  came  over 
in  the  summer  of  1630,  200  died  before  December. 
In  1754,  a  Philadelphia  sexton  testified  that  up 
to  November  14  he  had  buried  that  year  260  Pala- 
tines. 

In  the  South  lay  in  wait  the  Indian  and  the 
malaria-bearing  mosquito,  and  the  latter  slew 
more.  The  whites  might  patch  a  truce  with  the 
redskin,  but  never  with  the  mosquito.  They  died 
as  die  raw  Europeans  to-day  along  the  lower 
Niger  or  in  the  delta  of  the  Amazon.  In  June, 
1610,  only  150  persons  were  living  on  the  banks 
of  the  James  Eiver  out  of  900  who  had  been  landed 
there  within  three  years.  By  1616,  1650  persons 
altogether  had  been  sent  out;  of  these  300  had 
returned,  and  about  350  were  living  in  Virginia. 
During  a  twelvemonth  in  1619-20,  1200  left  Eng- 
land, but  only  200  were  alive  in  April,  1620.  Fifty 
years  later.  Governor  Berkeley  stated:  There 
is  not  oft  seasoned  hands  (as  we  term  them)  that 
die  now,  whereas  heretofore  not  one  out  of  five 
escaped  the  first  year."  A  "seasoned"  servant, 
having  only  one  more  year  to  ser^^e,  brought  a 
better  price  than  a  new-comer,  with  seven  and  a 
half  years  to  serve.  Surely  the  survivors  of  such 
a  shock  had  a  tough  fiber  to  pass  on  to  their  de- 
scendants. It  is  such  selection  that  explains  in 
part  the  extraordinary  blooming  of  the  colonies 
after  the  cruel  initial  period  was  over. 


20     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


THE  IMPEESS  OF  THE  FRONTIER 

No  doubt  the  iron  hardihood  of  the  South  Af- 
rican Boers  was  built  up  by  the  succumbing  of 
physical  and  moral  weaklings  amid  a  wilderness 
environment.  In  the  same  way  our  frontier  made 
it  hard  for  the  soft  basswood  type  to  survive. 
Of  the  380  persons  whom  Robertson  collected  in 
North  Carolina  in  1779  to  found  what  is  now 
Nashville,  only  134  were  alive  at  the  end  of  a 
year,  although  not  one  natural  death  had  oc- 
curred. Six  months  later  only  seventy  were  left 
alive.  If  there  had  been  any  weaklings  in  the 
party,  by  this  time  surely  the  tomahawk  would 
have  found  them.  No  wonder,  then,  that  when  the 
vote  was  cast  on  the  question  of  staying  or  going 
back,  no  one  voted  for  going  back.  The  less 
hardy,  too,  succumbed  to  the  fever  and  ague,  which 
decimated  the  settlers  of  the  wooded  country 
until  they  had  cleared  the  forests  and  drained  the 
marshes. 

In  the  early  days  there  streamed  over  the  Wil- 
derness Road  that  led  to  the  settlements  in  Ken- 
tucky two  tides,  an  outgoing  tide  of  stout-hearted 
pioneers,  seeking  farms  in  the  lovely  blue-grass 
land,  and  a  return  flow  of  timid  or  shiftless  peo- 
ple, affrighted  by  the  horrors  of  Indian  warfare 
or  tired  of  the  grim  struggle  for  subsistence  amid 
the  stumps.  The  select  character  of  those  who 
built  up  these  exposed  settlements  explains  the 
wonderful  forcefulness  of  the  people  of  Kentucky 
and  Ohio,  especially  before  they  had  given  so 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  21 


many  of  their  blood  to  found  the  commonwealths 
farther  west.  Thanks  to  the  protecting  frontier 
garrisons,  the  settlers  of  the  trans-Mississippi 
States  were  perhaps  not  so  rigorously  selected 
as  the  trans-Alleghany  pioneers ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  were  themselves  largely  of  pioneer 
stock. 

No  doubt  the  **run  of  the  continent"  has  im- 
proved the  fiber  of  the  American  people.  Of 
course  the  well  established  and  the  intellectuals 
had  no  motive  to  seek  the  West;  but  in  energy 
and  venturesomeness  those  who  sought  the  fron- 
tier were  superior  to  the  average  of  those  in  their 
class  who  stayed  behind.  It  was  the  pike  rather 
than  the  carp  that  found  their  way  out  of  the  pool. 
Now,  in  the  main,  those  who  pushed  through  the 
open  door  of  opportunity  left  more  children  than 
their  fellows  who  did  not.  Often  themselves 
members  of  large  families,  they  had  fecundity,  as 
it  were,  in  the  blood.  With  land  abundant  and 
the  outlook  encouraging,  they  married  earlier. 
In  the  narrow  life  of  the  young  West,  love  and 
family  were  stronger  interests  than  in  the  older 
society;  hence  all  married.  Thanks  to  cheap  liv- 
ing and  to  the  need  of  helpers,  the  big  family 
was  welcomed.  Living  by  agriculture,  the  West 
knew  little  of  cities,  manufactures,  social  rivalry, 
luxury,  and  a  serving  class,  all  foes  of  rapid  mul- 
tiplication. 

In  1802,  Michaux  found  the  families  of  the 
Ohio  settlers  "always  very  numerous,"  and  of 
Kentucky  he  wrote:    ''There  are  few  houses 


22     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


whicli  contain  less  than  four  or  five  children." 
Traveling  in  the  Ohio  Valley  in  1807,  Cmnings 
observed:  "Throughout  this  whole  country, 
whenever  you  see  a  cabin  you  see  a  swarm  of 
children" ;  and  Woods  wrote  in  1819 :  *'The  first 
thing  that  strikes  a  traveler  on  the  Ohio  is  the  im- 
mense number  of  children."  But  there  is  solider 
proof  of  frontier  prolificacy.  The  census  of  1830 
showed  the  proportion  of  children  under  five  years 
in  the  States  west  of  the  Alleghanies  to  be  a  third 
to  a  half  greater  than  in  the  seaboard  region. 
The  proportion  of  children  to  women  between 
fifteen  and  fifty  was  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  per 
cent,  greater.  In  1840,  children  were  forty  per 
cent,  more  numerous  among  the  Yankees  of  the 
Western  Reserve  than  among  their  kinsmen  in 
Connecticut.  The  next  half-century  took  the 
edge  off  the  fecundity  of  the  people  of  the  Ohio 
Valley;  but  their  sons  and  daughters  who  had 
pushed  on  into  Kansas,  Nebraska,  and  Minne- 
sota, showed  families  a  fifth  larger.  In  1900,  the 
people  of  the  agricultural  frontier — Texas,  Okla- 
homa, and  the  Dakotas — had  a  proportion  of  chil- 
dren larger  by  twenty-eight  per  cent,  than  that  of 
the  population  between  Pittsburgh  and  Omaha. 

If  the  frontier  drew  from  the  seaboard  popula- 
tion a  certain  element,  and  let  it  multiply  more 
freely  than  it  would  have  multiplied  at  home,  the 
frontier  must  have  made  that  element  more  plen- 
tiful in  the  American  people,  taken  as  a  whole; 
and  this,  indeed,  appears  to  be  what  actually  oc- 
curred.   No  one  ventures  to  assert  that  the  Amer- 


THE  ORIGINAL  MAKE-UP  23 


icans  are  differentiated  from  the  original  immi- 
grating stocks  by  superiority  in  any  form  of 
talent  or  in  any  kind  of  sensibility;  but  they  im- 
press all  foreign  observers  with  their  high  endow- 
ment of  energy,  tenacity  of  purpose,  and  willing- 
ness to  take  risks,  and  these  are  just  the  qualities 
that  are  fostered  and  made  more  abundant  by 
the  wilderness.  I  do  not  maintain  that  life  in 
America  has  added  any  new  trait  to  the  descen- 
dants of  transplanted  Europeans,  nor  has  it  filled 
them  all  with  the  pioneer  virtues.  What  I  do 
mean  is  that,  owing  to  the  progressive  peopling 
of  the  fertile  wilderness,  certain  valuable  strains 
that  once  were  represented  in,  say,  a  sixth  of  the 
population,  might  come  to  be  represented  in  a 
quarter  of  it;  and  the  timid,  inert  sort  might 
shrivel  from  a  fifth  of  the  population  to  a  tenth. 
Such  a  shifting  in  the  numerical  strength  of  types 
would  account  both  for  the  large  contingent  of 
the  forceful  in  the  normal  American  community, 
and  for  the  prevalence  of  the  ruthless,  high-pres- 
sure, get-there-at-any-cost  spirit  which  leaves  in 
its  wake  achievement,  prosperity,  neurasthenia. 
Bright 's  disease,  heart  failure,  and  shattered 
moral  standards. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  CELTIC  lEISH 

FROM  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  until 
the  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century 
there  was  a  lull  in  immigration.  In  a  lifetime 
fewer  aliens  came  than  now  debark  in  a  couple 
of  months.  During  these  sixty  years  powerful 
forces  of  assimilation  were  rapidly  molding  a 
unified  people  out  of  the  motley  colonial  popula- 
tion. In  the  fermenting  West,  the  meeting-place 
of  men  from  everywhere,  elements  of  the  greatest 
diversity  were  blending  into  a  common  American 
type  which  soon  began  to  tinge  the  streams  of 
life  that  ran  distinct  from  one  another  in  the  sea- 
board States.  Then  came  another  epoch  of  vast 
immigration,  which  has  largely  neutralized  the 
effect  of  the  nationalizing  forces,  and  has  brought 
us  into  a  state  of  heterogeneity  like  to  that  of  the 
later  colonial  era. 

THE  HIBERNIAN  TIDE 

After  the  great  luU,  the  Celtic  Irish  were  the 
first  to  come  in  great  numbers.  From  1820  to 
1850  they  were  more  than  two-fifths  of  all  immi- 
grants, and  during  the  fifties  more  than  one-third. 
More  than  a  seventh  of  our  30,000,000  immigrants 
have  brought  in  their  aching  hearts  memories  of 

24 


THE  CELTIC  lEISH  25 


the  fresh  green  of  the  moist  island  in  the  North- 
ern sea.  The  registered  number  is  about  4,250,- 
000,  but  the  actual  number  is  larger,  for  many  of 
the  earlier  Irish,  embarking  in  English  ports, 
were  counted  as  coming  from  England.  No  doubt 
the  Irish  who  have  suffered  the  wrench  of  expa- 
triation to  America  outnumber  the  present  popu- 
lation of  the  Green  Isle,  which  is  only  a  little 
more  than  one-half  of  what  it  was  before  the  crisis 
of  famine,  rebellion,  and  misery  that  came  about 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is,  in- 
deed, a  question  whether  there  is  not  more  Irish 
blood  now  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  than  on  the 
other.  It  is  possible  that  during  Victoria's  reign 
more  of  her  subjects  left  Ireland  in  order  to  live 
under  the  Stars  and  Stripes  than  left  England  in 
order  to  build  a  Greater  Britain  under  the  Union 
Jack. 

In  his  * '  Coronation  Ode, ' '  William  Watson  sees 
Ireland  as 

.  .  .  the  lonely  and  the  lovely  Bride 

Whom  we  have  wedded,  but  have  never  won. 

The  truth  of  this  shows  in  the  way  the  wander- 
ing Irish  still  shun  the  lands  under  the  British 
crown.  Most  of  the  inviting  frontier  left  on  our 
continent  lies  in  western  Canada.  Already  the 
opportunities  there  have  induced  land-hungry 
Americans  to  renounce  their  flag  at  the  rate  of  a 
hundred  thousand  in  a  single  year.  Yet  the  re- 
sentful Irish  turn  to  the  narrower  opportunities 
of  what  they  regard  as  their  land  of  emancipa- 


26     THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


tioiL  During  a  recent  nine-year  period,  while 
the  English  and  the  Scotch  emigrants  preferred 
Canada  to  "the  States,"  eleven  times  as  many- 
Irish  sought  admission  in  our  ports  as  were  ad- 
mitted to  Canada,  although  Canada's  systematic 
campaign  for  immigrants  is  carried  on  alike  in 
England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland. 

Very  likely  the  Irish  exodus  is  a  closed  chapter 
of  history.  Ireland's  population  has  been  shrink- 
ing for  sixty  years,  and  she  has  now  fewer  inhabi- 
tants than  the  State  of  Ohio.  People  are  leaving 
the  land  of  heather  twice  as  fast  as  they  are 
abandoning  the  land  of  the  shamrock.  The  early 
marriage  and  blind  prolificacy  that  had  overpopu- 
lated  the  land  until  half  the  people  lived  on  pota- 
toes, and  two-fifths  dwelt  in  one-room  mud  cabins, 
are  gone  forever,  and  Ireland  has  now  one  of  the 
lowest  birth-rates  in  Europe.  Gradually  the  peo- 
ple are  again  coming  to  own  the  ground  under 
their  feet;  native  industries  and  native  arts  are 
re\i.ving,  and  a  wonderful  rural  cooperative  move- 
ment is  in  full  swing.  The  long  night  of  misgov- 
ernment,  ignorance,  and  superfecundity  seems 
over,  the  star  of  home  rule  is  high,  and  the  day 
may  soon  come  when  these  home-loving  people 
will  not  need  to  seek  their  bread  under  strange 
skies. 

During  its  earlier  period,  Irish  immigration 
brought  in  a  desirable  class,  which  assimilated 
readily.  Later,  the  enormous  assisted  immigra- 
tion that  followed  the  famine  of  1846-48  brought 
in  many  of  an  inferior  type,  who  huddled  help- 


THE  CELTIC  IRISH 


27 


lessly  in  the  poorer  quarters  of  our  cities  and  be- 
came men  of  the  spade  and  the  hod.  After  the 
crisis  was  past,  there  again  came  a  type  that  was 
superior  to  those  who  remained  behind.  Of 
course  the  acquiescent  property-owning  class 
never  emigrated,  and  those  rising  in  trade  or  in 
the  professions  rarely  came  unless  they  had  fallen 
into  trouble  through  their  patriotism.  But  of  the 
common  people  there  is  evidence  that  the  more 
capable  part  leaked  away  to  America.  The  Earl 
of  Dunraven  testifies: 

Those  who  have  remained  have,  for  the  most  part, 
been  the  least  physically  fit,  the  most  mentally  deficient, 
and  those  who  correspond  to  the  lowest  industrial  stand- 
ard. .  .  .  For  half  a  century  and  more  the  best 
equipped,  mentally  and  physically,  of  the  population 
have  been  leaving  Ireland.  The  survival  of  the  un- 
fittest  has  been  the  law,  and  the  inevitable  result,  de- 
terioration of  the  race,  statistics  abundantly  prove. 

Owing  to  this  exodus  of  the  young  and  ener- 
getic, Ireland  has  become  the  country  of  old  men 
and  old  women.  An  eighth  of  her  people  are 
more  than  sixty-five  years  old  as  against  an 
eleventh  in  England.  In  half  a  century  the  pro- 
portion of  lunatics  and  idiots  in  the  population  of 
Ireland  rose  from  one  in  657  to  one  in  178.  In 
1906  the  inspector  of  lunatics  reported: 

The  emigration  of  the  strong  and  healthy  members  of 
the  community  not  alone  increases  the  ratio  of  the 
insane  who  are  left  behind  to  the  general  population, 
but  also  lowers  the  general  standard  of  mental  and 


28      THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


bodily  health  by  eliminating  many  of  the  members  of 
the  community  who  are  best  fitted  to  survive  and  propa- 
gate the  race. 

He  may  not  have  known  that,  compared  with 
the  rest  of  our  immigrants,  the  Irish  have  twice 
their  share  of  insanity.  The  commissioners  of 
national  education,  after  pointing  with  pride  to 
half  a  century's  great  reduction  of  illiteracy, 
add: 

The  change  for  the  better  is  remarkable  when  it  is 
remembered  that  it  was  the  younger  and  better  edu- 
cated who  emigrated  .  .  .  during  this  period,  while  the 
majority  of  the  illiterate  were  persons  who  were  too 
old  to  leave  their  homes. 

THE  IRISH  IN  THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE 

A  close  study  of  two  hundred  workingmen's 
families  in  New  York  City  showed  the  average 
German  family  thirty  dollars  ahead  at  the  end  of 
the  year  while  the  average  Irish  family  of  about 
the  same  income  had  spent  ten  dollars  more 
than  it  had  eatned.  Charity  visitors  know  that 
the  Irish  are  often  as  open-handed  and  improv- 
ident as  the  Bedouins.  A  Catholic  educator  ac- 
counts for  the  scarcity  of  Irish  millionaires  by  de- 
claring that  his  people  are  too  generous  to  accu- 
mulate gre^t  fortunes.  They  are  free  givers, 
and  no  people  are  more  ready  to  take  into  the 
family  the  orphans  of  their  relatives.  In  a 
county  of  mixed  nationalities  there  will  be  more 
mortgages  and  stale  debts  against  Irish  farmers 
than  against  any  others.    In  a  well-paid  class  of 


THE  CELTIC  IRISH  29 


workers  there  will  be  more  renters  and  fewer 
home-owners  among  the  Irish  than  among  any 
other  nationality  of  equal  pay.  Less  habitually 
than  others  do  the  Irish  make  systematic  provi- 
sion for  old  age.  They  depend  on  the  earnings  of 
their  children,  who,  indeed,  are  many  and  loyal 
enough.  But  if  the  children  die  early  or  scatter, 
the  day-laborer  must  often  eat  the  bread  of 
charity.  A  decade  ago  the  Irish  were  found  to 
be  relatively  thrice  as  numerous  in  our  almshouses 
as  other  non-native  elements.  In  the  Northeast, 
where  they  formed  a  quarter  of  the  foreign-bom 
population,  they  furnished  three-fifths  of  the 
paupers.  In  Massachusetts,  and  in  Boston  as 
well,  they  were  four  times  as  common  in  the  alms- 
houses as  out  of  them,  although,  to  be  sure,  a  part 
of  this  bad  showing  is  due  to  more  of  them  being 
aged.  Nor  do  their  children  provide  much  better 
for  the  future.  In  Boston,  those  of  Irish  parent- 
age produce  two  and  one-half  times  their  quota 
of  paupers.  In  both  first  and  second  generations 
the  frugal  and  fore-looking  Germans  there  have 
less  than  a  tenth  of  the  pauperism  of  the  Irish, 
while  in  1910  in  the  country  at  large  the  tendency 
of  the  Irish  toward  the  almshouse  was  nearly 
three  times  that  of  the  Germans.  Dr.  Bushee, 
who  has  investigated  the  conditions  in  Boston, 
says: 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  ordinary  Irishman  is  of 
a  provident  disposition ;  he  lives  in  the  present  and 
worries  comparatively  little  about  the  future.  He  is 
not  extravagant  in  any  particular  way,  but  is  wasteful 


30      THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


in  even,-  way ;  it  is  his  nature  to  drift  when  he  ought 
to  plan  and  economize.  This  disposition,  combined 
with  an  ever-present  tendency  to  drink  too  much,  is 
liable  to  result  in  insecure  employment  and  a  small  in- 
come. And,  to  make  matters  worse,  in  families  of  this 
kind  children  are  born  with  reckless  re^larity. 

In  extenuation,  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  at 
home  the  earlier  Irish  immigrants  had  lived  under 
perhaps  a  more  demoraUzing  social  condition  than 
that  from  which  any  other  of  our  immigrants  have 
come.  Fleeing  from  plague  and  starvation,  great 
numbers  ■were  dumped  at  our  ports  with  no  means 
of  getting  out  upon  the  land.  "VThat  was  there  for 
them  to  do  but  to  rush  their  labor  into  the  nearest 
market  and  huddle  sociably  together  in  wretched 
slums,  where,  despite  their  sturdy  physique,  they 
fell  an  easy  prey  to  sickness  and  died  off  twice  as 
fast  as  they  should?  They  lived  as  poorly  as 
do  the  Russian  Jews  when  first  they  come;  but, 
being  a  green  country-folk,  they  understood  less 
than  do  the  town-bred  Jews  how  to  withstand  the 
noxious  influences  of  cities  and  slums. 

Certainly,  along  with  their  courage  and  loyalty, 
the  Irish  did  not  bring  the  economic  virtues. 
Straight  from  the  hoe  they  came,  without  even 
the  thrift  of  the  farmer  who  owns  the  land  he  tills. 
Many  of  them  were  no  better  fitted  to  succeed  in 
the  modem  competitive  order  than  their  ancestors 
of  the  septs  in  the  days  of  Strongbow.  In  value- 
sense  and  foresight,  how  far  they  stand  behind 
Scot,  Fleming,  or  Yankee  I  In  the  acquisitive 
melee  most  of  them  are  as  children  compared  with 


THE  CELTIC  IRISH 


31 


the  Greek  or  the  Semite.  An  observant  settle- 
ment worker  has  said: 

The  Irish  are  apt  to  make  their  occupation  a  second- 
ary matter.  They  remain  idle  if  no  man  hires  them; 
but  not  so  the  Jew.  If  he  can  get  no  regular  employ- 
ment, it  is  possible  to  gather  rags  and  junk  and  sell 
them.  ...  If  employed  lander  a  hard  master,  he  still 
works  on  under  conditions  that  would  drive  the  Irish- 
man to  drink  and  the  American  to  suicide  until  finally 
he  sees  an  opportunity  to  improve  his  condition. 

We  must  not  forget  that  Irish  development  had 
been  forcibly  arrested  by  the  selfish  policy  of  their 
conquerors.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  English  Parliament,  at  the  behest  of 
English  graziers  and  farmers,  put  an  end  to  Ire- 
land's cattle-trade  to  England,  then  to  her  ex- 
portation of  provisions  to  the  colonies.  After- 
ward came  export  duties  on  Irish  woolens,  and, 
later,  complete  prohibition  of  the  exportation  of 
woolens  to  foreign  countries.  "Cotton,  glass, 
hats,  iron  manufactures,  sugar  refining — ^what- 
ever business  Ireland  turned  her  hand  to,  and 
always  with  success — was  in  turn  restricted." 
The  result  was  that  the  natural  capacity  of  the 
people  was  repressed,  the  growth  of  industrial 
habits  was  checked,  and  the  country  was  held  down 
to  simple  agriculture  under  a  blighting  system  of 
absentee  landlordism.  Still,  we  cannot  overlook 
the  success  of  the  Scottish  Lowlanders  in  Ulster 
under  the  same  strangling  discriminations,  nor 
forget  that  the  3500  German  Protestant  refugees 


32      THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


who  were  settled  in  Munster  in  1709  prospered  as 
did  their  brother  refugees  in  Pennsylvania,  and 
became  in  time  much  wealthier  than  their  Celtic 
neighbors. 

A  thousand  years  ago  an  Irish  scholar,  teach- 
ing at  Liege,  acknowledged  his  love  for  the  cup 
in  his  invocation  to  the  Muses,  and  addressed  a 
poem  to  a  friend  who,  being  the  possessor  of  a 
great  ^^neyard,  understood  "how  to  awaken  gen- 
ius through  the  inspiration  of  the  heavenly  dew," 

ALCOHOLISM  THE  FKEQUENT  CAUSE  OF  POVEETY 

It  is  this  same  heavenly  dew" — whose  Erse 
name  usquebaugh,  we  have  pronounced  "whisky" 
— that,  more  than  anything  else,  has  held  back  the 
Irish  in  America.  The  Irishman  is  no  more  a 
craver  of  alcohol  than  other  men,  but  his  socia- 
bility betrays  him  to  that  beverage  which  is  the 
seal  of  good  fellowship.  He  does  not  sit  down 
alone  with  a  bottle,  as  the  Scandinavian  will  do, 
nor  get  his  friends  round  a  table  and  quaff  lager, 
as  the  German  does.  No  "Dutch  treat"  for  him. 
He  drinks  spirits  in  public,  and,  after  a  dram  or 
two,  his  com^vial  nature  requires  that  every 
stranger  in  the  room  shall  seal  friendship  in  a 
glass  with  him.  His  temperament,  too,  makes  liq- 
uor a  snare  to  him.  Where  another  drinker  be- 
comes mellow  or  silent  or  sodden,  the  Celt  be- 
comes quarrelsome  and  foolish. 

Twenty  years  ago  an  analysis  of  more  than 
seven  thousand  cases  of  destitution  in  our  cities 
showed  that  drink  was  twice  as  frequent  a  cause 


THE  CELTIC  IKISH  33 


of  poverty  among  the  Irisli  cases  as  among  the 
Germans,  and  occurred  half  again  as  often  among 
them  as  among  the  native  American  cases. 
Among  many  thousands  of  recent  applications 
for  charity,  ''intemperance  of  the  bread-winner" 
crops  out  as  a  cause  of  destitution  in  one  case 
out  of  twelve  among  old-strain  Americans ;  but  it 
taints  one  case  out  of  seven  among  the  Irish  and 
one  case  out  of  six  among  the  Irish  of  the  second 
generation.  In  the  charity  hospitals  of  New  York 
alcohohsm  is  responsible  for  more  than  a  fifth 
of  all  the  cases.  Drink  is  the  root  of  the  trouble 
in  a  quarter  of  the  native  Americans  treated,  in  a 
third  of  the  Irish  patients,  and  in  two-fifths  of 
the  cases  among  the  native-bom  of  Irish  fathers. 
Contrast  this  painful  showing  with  the  fact  that 
one  Italian  patient  out  of  sixty,  one  Magyar  pa- 
tient out  of  seventy,  one  Polish  patient  out  of 
eighty,  and  one  Hebrew  patient  out  of  one  hun- 
dred is  in  the  hospital  on  account  of  drink! 

IRISH  NEAE  THE  FOOT  OF  THE  LIST  IN"  CEIME 

In  the  quality  of  their  crimes  our  immigrants 
differ  more  from  one  another  than  they  do  in 
complexion  or  in  the  color  of  their  eyes.  The 
Irishman's  love  of  fighting  has  made  Donnybrook 
Fair  a  byword ;  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  personal  vio- 
lence is  six  or  seven  times  as  often  the  cause  of 
confinement  for  Italian,  Magyar,  or  Finnish  pris- 
oners in  our  penitentiaries  as  for  the  Irish. 
Patrick  may  be  quarrelsome,  but  he  fights  ^vith 
his  hands,  and  in  his  cups  he  is  not  homicidal, 


34     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


like  the  South  Italian,  or  ferocious,  like  the 
Finn.  Three-fifths  of  the  Hebrew  convicts  are 
confined  for  gainful  offenses,  but  only  one-fifth 
of  the  Irish.  Among  a  score  or  more  of  nation- 
alities, the  Irish  stand  nearly  at  the  foot  of  the  list 
in  the  commission  of  larceny,  burglary,  forgery, 
fraud,  or  homicide.  Eape,  pandering,  and  the 
white-slave  traffic  are  almost  unknown  among 
them.  What  could  be  more  striking  than  the  fact 
that  more  than  half  of  the  Irish  convicts  have 
been  sent  up  for  ''offenses  against  public  order," 
such  as  intoxication  and  vagrancy!  One  cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  Celtic  offender  is  a  feckless 
fellow,  enemy  of  himself  more  than  of  any  one 
else.  It  is  usually  not  cupidity  nor  brutality  nor 
lust  that  lodges  him  in  prison,  but  conviviality 
and  weak  control  of  impulses. 

It  is  certain  that  no  immigrant  is  more  loyal 
to  wife  and  child  than  the  Irishman.  Out  of 
nearly  ten  thousand  charity  cases  in  which  a  wife 
was  the  head  of  the  family,  the  greatest  frequency 
of  widowhood  and  the  least  frequency  of  deser- 
tion or  separation  is  among  the  Irish.  In  only 
eighteen  per  cent,  of  the  Irish  cases  is  the  hus- 
band missing;  whereas  among  the  Hebrews,  Slo- 
vaks, Lithuanians,  and  Magyars  he  is  missing 
in  from  forty  to  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  cases.  But 
the  sons  of  Irish,  with  that  ready  adaptation  to 
surroundings  characteristic  of  the  Celt,  desert 
their  wives  with  just  about  the  same  frequency  as 
men  of  pure  American  stock;  namely,  thirty-six 
per  cent.,  or  twice  that  of  their  fathers. 


THE  CELTIC  lEISH 


35 


GEEAT  CHANGES  IN  OCCUPATION  AMONG  THE  IRISH 

Thirty  years  ago,  when  the  Irish  and  the  Ger- 
mans in  America  were  nearly  equal  in  number, 
there  were  striking  contrasts  in  the  place  they  took 
in  industry.  As  domestic  servants,  laborers,  mill- 
hands,  miners,  quarrymen,  stone-cutters,  laun- 
dry workers,  restaurant  keepers,  railway  and 
street-car  employees,  officials  and  employees 
of  government,  the  Irish  were  two  or  three 
times  as  numerous  as  the  Germans,  On  the 
other  hand,  as  farmers,  saloon-keepers,  book- 
keepers, designers,  musicians,  inventors,  mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  and  physicians,  the  Ger- 
mans far  outnumbered  the  Irish.  Where  artis- 
tic skill  is  required,  as  in  confectionery,  cabinet- 
making,  wood-carving,  engraving,  photography, 
and  jewelry-making;  where  scientific  knowledge 
is  called  for,  as  in  brewing,  distilling,  sugar-refin- 
ing, and  iron  manufacture,  the  Irish  were  hope- 
lessly beaten  by  the  trained  and  plodding  Ger- 
mans. 

For  a  while,  the  bulk  of  Irish  formed  a  pick- 
and-shovel  caste,  claiming  exclusive  possession  of 
the  poorest  and  least  honorable  occupations,  and 
mobbing  the  Chinaman  or  the  negro  who  intruded 
into  their  field.  But  the  record  of  their  children 
proves  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  stock  that 
dooms  it  forever  to  serve  at  the  tail-end  of  a 
wheelbarrow.  Take,  for  instance,  those  workers 
known  to  the  statistician  as  "Female  bread-win- 
ners."   Of  the  first  generation  of  Irish,  fifty- 


36     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


four  per  cent,  are  servants  and  waitresses ;  of  the 
second  generation,  only  sixteen  per  cent.  Whither 
have  these  daughters  gone?  Out  of  the  kitchen 
into  the  factory,  the  store,  the  office,  and  the 
school.  In  the  needle  trades  they  are  twice  as 
frequent  as  Bridget  or  Nora  who  came  over  in  the 
steerage.  Five  times  as  often  they  serve  behind 
the  counter,  seven  times  as  often  they  work  at  the 
desk  as  stenographer  or  bookkeeper,  five  times 
as  frequently  they  teach.  One  native  girl  out  of 
twelve  whose  fathers  were  Irish  is  a  teacher,  as 
against  one  girl  out  of  nine  with  American  fathers. 
The  Irish  girls  of  the  second  generation  are  twice 
as  well  represented  as  the  native-born  German 
girls.  Evidently  it  will  not  be  long  before  they 
have  their  full  share  of  school  positions.  In 
thirty  leading  cities  eighteen  per  cent,  of  the 
teachers  are  second-generation  Irish;  and  there 
are  cities  where  these  swift  climbers  constitute 
from  two-fifths  to  a  half  of  the  teaching  force. 

'Tonio  or  Ivan  now  wields  the  shovel  while 
Michael's  boy  escapes  competition  with  him  by 
running  nimbly  up  the  ladder  of  occupations. 
As  compared  with  their  immigrant  fathers,  the 
proportion  of  laborers  among  the  sons  of  Irish- 
men is  halved,  while  that  of  professional  men  and 
salesmen  is  doubled,  and  that  of  clerks,  copyists, 
and  bookkeepers  is  trebled.  The  quota  of  saloon- 
keepers remains  the  same.  There  is  no  drift  into 
agriculture  or  into  mercantile  pursuits.  In  the 
cities  the  Irish  suffer  little  from  the  competition 
of  the  later  immigrants  because,  thanks  to  their 


THE  CELTIC  IRISH  39 


political  control,  they  divide  among  themselves 
much  of  the  work  carried  on  by  the  municipality 
as  well  as  the  jobs  under  the  great  franchise- 
holding  corporations.  So  far,  the  strength  of  the 
Irish  has  been  in  personal  relations.  They  shine 
in  the  forum,  in  executive  work,  in  public  guard- 
ianship, and  in  public  transportation,  but  not  in 
the  more  monotonous  branches  of  manufacture. 
In  the  colleges  it  has  been  noted  that  the  students 
of  Irish  blood  are  strong  for  theology  and  law, 
but  show  little  taste  for  medicine,  engineering,  or 
technology. 

Among  the  first  thousand  men  of  science  in 
America  the  Irish  are  only  a  fourth  as  well  repre- 
sented as  the  Germans,  a  fifteenth  as  well  as  the 
English  and  Canadians,  and  a  twentieth  as  well 
as  the  Scotch.  This  backwardness  is  in  part  due 
to  the  overhang  of  bad  conditions;  and  the  com- 
pilers of  the  table  very  properly  suggest  that  "the 
native-bom  sons  of  Irish-born  parents  may  not  be 
inferior  in  scientific  productivity  to  other  classes 
of  the  community."  The  same  comment  may  be 
made  on  the  fact  that  of  the  persons  listed  in 
"Who 's  Who  in  America,"  two  per  cent,  were 
German-born,  another  two  per  cent,  were  English- 
born,  but  only  one  per  cent,  came  from  the  land 
of  Erin. 

IKISH  INTELLECT  AND  MENTAL  ABILITY 

No  doubt  the  peaks  of  Celtic  superiority  are 
poetry  and  eloquence.  Their  gifts  of  emotion 
and  imagination  give  the  Irish  the  key  to  human 


40     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


hearts.  They  are  eloquent  for  the  same  reason 
that  they  are  poor  technicians  and  investigators, 
for  the  typical  Celt  sees  things  not  as  they  really 
are,  but  as  they  are  to  him. 

The  Irishman  still  leans  on  authority  and  shows 
little  tendency  to  think  for  himself.  In  phi- 
losophy and  science  he  is  far  behind  the  head  of 
the  procession.  Even  when  well-educated,  he 
thinks  within  the  framework  formed  by  certain 
conventional  ideas.  Unlike  the  educated  German 
or  Jew,  he  rarely  ventures  to  dissect  the  ideas  of 
parental  authority,  the  position  of  woman,  prop- 
erty, success,  competition,  individual  liberty,  etc., 
that  lie  at  the  base  of  commonplace  thought. 
Here,  again,  this  limitation  by  sentiment  and  au- 
thority derives  doubtless  from  the  social  history 
of  the  Irish  rather  than  from  their  blood.  They 
have  been  engrossed  with  an  old-fashioned  prob- 
lem— that  of  freeing  their  country.  Meanwhile, 
the  luckier  peoples  have  swept  on  to  ripen  their 
thinking  about  class  relations,  industrial  organi- 
zation, and  social  institutions. 

TRAITS  OP  THE  CELT 

With  his  Celtic  imagination  as  a  magic  glass, 
the  Irishman  sees  into  the  human  heart  and  learns 
how  to  touch  its  strings.  No  one  can  wheedle 
like  an  Irish  beggar  or  ''blarney"  like  an  Irish 
ward  boss.  Not  only  do  the  Irish  furnish  stirring 
orators,  persuasive  stump-speakers,  moving 
pleaders,  and  delightful  after-dinner  speech- 
makers,  but  they  give  us  good  salesmen  and  sue- 


THE  CELTIC  IKISH  41 


cessful  traveling-men.  Then,  too,  they  know  Low 
to  manage  people.  The  Irish  contractor  is  a 
great  figure  in  construction  work.  The  Irish 
mine  "boss"  or  section  foreman  has  the  knack 
of  handling  men.  The  Irish  politician  is  an  adept 
in  lining  up"  voters  of  other  nationalities. 
More  Germans  than  Irish  enlisted  in  the  Union 
armies,  but  more  of  the  Irish  rose  to  be  officers. 
In  the  great  corporations  Americans  control  pol- 
icy and  finance,  Germans  are  used  in  technical 
work,  and  Irishmen  are  found  in  executive  posi- 
tions. The  Irish  are  well  to  the  fore  in  organiz- 
ing labor  and  in  leading  athletics.  '*0f  two  ap- 
plicants," says  a  city  school  superintendent,  "I 
take  the  teacher  with  an  Irish  name,  because 
she  will  have  less  trouble  in  discipline,  and  hits 
it  off  better  with  the  parents  and  the  neighbor- 
hood." 

Whatever  is  in  the  Irish  mind  is  available  on 
the  instant,  so  that  the  Irish  rarely  fail  to  do 
themselves  justice.  They  keep  their  best  foot 
forward,  and  if  they  fall,  they  light  on  their  feet. 
They  succeed  as  lawyers  not  only  because  they  can 
play  upon  the  jury,  but  because  they  are  quick 
in  thrust  and  parry.  They  abound  in  newspaper 
offices  because  their  imagination  enables  them  to 
keep  **in  touch"  with  the  public  mind.  The 
Irishman  rarely  attains  the  thorough  knowledge 
of  the  German  physician;  but  he  makes  his  mark 
as  surgeon,  because  he  is  quick  to  perceive  and  to 
decide  when  the  knife  discloses  a  grave,  unsus- 
pected condition. 


42      THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


The  Irishman  accepts  the  Erse  proverb,  ''Con- 
tention is  better  than  loneliness."  "His  nature 
goes  out  to  the  other  fellow  all  the  time,"  declares 
a  wise  priest.  The  lodge  meeting  of  a  Hibernian 
benevolent  association  is  a  revelation  of  kindness 
and  delicacy  of  feeling  in  rough,  toil-worn  men, 
A  great  criminal  lawyer  tells  me  that  if  he  has  a 
desperate  case  to  defend,  he  keeps  the  cold-blooded 
Swede  off  the  jury  and  gets  an  Irishman  on,  es- 
pecially one  who  has  been  "in  trouble."  Bridget 
becomes  attached  to  the  family  she  serves,  and, 
after  she  is  married,  calls  again  and  again  "to 
see  how  the  childher  are  coming  on."  Freda, 
after  years  of  service,  will  leave  you  otf- 
hand  and  never  evince  the  remotest  interest  in 
your  family.  The  Irish  detest  the  merit  system, 
for  they  make  politics  a  matter  of  friendship  and 
favor.  In  their  willingness  to  serve  a  friend  they 
are  apt  to  lose  sight  of  the  importance  of  prepara- 
tion, fitness  and  efficiency  in  the  public  servant. 
Hence  they  warm  to  a  reform  movement  only 
when  it  becomes  a  fight  on  law-breakers.  Then 
the  Hibernian  district  attorney  goes  after  the 
"higher-ups"  like  a  St.  George.  When  the  Irish 
do  renounce  machine  politics,  they  become  broad 
democrats  rather  than  "good  government" 
men. 

Imaginative  and  sensitive  to  what  others  think 
of  him,  the  Celt  is  greatly  affected  by  praise  and 
criticism.  Unlike  the  Teuton,  he  cannot  plod  pa- 
tiently toward  a  distant  goal  without  an  appre- 
ciative word  or  glance.    He  does  his  best  when  he 


THE  CELTIC  IRISH  43 


is  paced,  for  emulation  is  his  sharpest  stimulus. 
The  grand  stand  has  something  to  do  with  the 
Irish  bent  for  athletic  contests.  Irish  school- 
children love  the  lime-light,  and  distinguish  them- 
selves better  on  the  platform  than  in  the  class- 
room, Irish  teachers  with  good  records  in  the 
training-school  are  less  likely  than  other  teachers 
to  improve  themselves  by  private  study. 

"The  Irish  are  wilder  than  the  rest  in  their 
expression  of  grief,"  observes  the  visiting  nurse, 
**but  they  don't  take  on  for  long."  The  Irish- 
man is  less  persistent  than  others  in  keeping  up 
the  premiums  on  his  insurance  policy,  the  pay- 
ments on  his  building-and-loan  association  stock. 
He  is  quick  to  throw  up  his  job  or  change  his  place 
in  order  to  avoid  sameness.  '*My  will  is  strong," 
I  heard  a  bright-eyed  Kathleen  say,  *'but  it  keeps 
changing  its  object;  Gunda  [her  Norwegian 
friend]  is  so  determined  and  fixed  in  purpose!" 
There  is  a  proverb,  **The  Irishman  is  no  good 
till  he  is  kicked,"  meaning  that  he  is  unstable  till 
his  blood  is  up.  Once  his  fighting  spirit  is  roused, 
he  proves  to  be  a  ''last  ditcher."  As  a  soldier, 
he  is  better  in  a  charge  than  in  defense,  and  if 
held  back,  he  frets  himself  to  exhaustion. 

A  professor  compares  his  Celtic  students  to 
the  game  trout,  which  makes  one  splendid  dash 
for  the  fly,  but  sulks  if  he  misses  it.  A  bishop 
told  me  how  his  prize-man,  an  Irish  youth,  sent  to 
Paris  to  study  Hebrew,  was  amazed  at  the  prodig- 
ious industry  of  his  German  and  Polish  chums. 
*'I  never  knew  before,"  he  wrote,  "what  study 


44     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


is. "  A  settlement  worker  comments  on  the  avid- 
ity with  which  night-school  pupils  in  Irish  neigh- 
borhoods select  classes  with  interesting  subjects 
of  instruction,  and  the  rapidity  with  which  they 
drop  off  when  the  "dead  grind"  begins.  Their 
temperament  rebels  at  close,  continuous  applica- 
tion. The  craftsman  of  Irish  blood  is  likely  to 
be  a  little  slapdash  in  method,  and  he  rarely 
stands  near  the  top  of  his  trade  in  skill.  The 
Irishman  succeeds  best  in  staple  farming — all 
wheat,  all  cotton,  or  all  beets.  With  the  advent 
of  diversified  farming,  he  is  supplanted  by  the 
painstaking  German,  Scandinavian,  or  Pole. 
Work  requiring  close  attention  to  details — like 
that  of  the  nurseryman,  the  florist,  or  the  breeder 
— falls  into  the  hands  of  a  more  patient  type.  In 
banking  and  finance,  men  of  a  colder  blood  control. 

FUTURE  OF  THE  IKISH-AMERICAN 

The  word  ''brilliant"  is  oftener  used  for  the 
Irish  than  for  any  other  aliens  among  us  save  the 
Hebrews.  Yet  those  of  Irish  blood  are  far  from 
manning  their  share  of  the  responsible  non-po- 
litical i30sts  in  American  society.  Their  contri- 
bution by  no  means  matches  that  of  an  equal 
number  of  the  old  American  breed.  But,  in  sooth, 
it  is  too  soon  yet  to  expect  the  Irish  strain  to  show 
what  it  can  do.  Despite  their  schooling,  the  chil- 
dren of  the  immigrant  from  Ireland  often  become 
infected  with  the  parental  slackness,  unthrift,  and 
irresponsibility.  They  in  turn  communicate  some 
of  the  heritage  to  their  children ;  so  that  we  shall 


THE  CELTIC  lEISH  45 


have  to  wait  until  the  fourth  g-eneration  before 
we  shall  learn  how  the  Hibernian  stock  compares 
in  value  with  stocks  that  have  had  a  happier  social 
history. 


1821-25  I  IZ90O 
1826-30  m  37 BOO 
1831-35  Hl^l  70300 


1836-40  1 

Il35  100 

1841-45  1 

1  III  1  mil  ^^^^B 

1846-50  1 

1593  600'^^^V 

TA  M 1 N  e'Tnd'IHHHHHHBHHH 

1851-55  1 

1694  700 

REBELLION  IN  1 R  E  L  A  N  D  ^■■^■■■H 

1856-60  1 

1  219  400  ^^^H 

^    HARD  TIMES  IN    UNITED  STATES 

1861-65  1 

ri96Too'I^IH 

1      CIVIL  WAR  IN  UNITED  STATES 

1866-70  1 

1  239  400 

I871-7S  1 

1  295  200 

1876-80  1 

nTTToO^^B      HARD   TIMES    IN   UNITED  STATES 

1881-85  1 

1  34.^400 

^^^^^^m  FAMINE  IN  IRELAND 

1886-90  1 

310  100  i^^^H 

1891-95  1 

1  227  200  ^^^H 

I896-I900| 

1  161  200  I^^H 

HARD  TIMES  IN  UNITED  STATES 

1901-05  1 

nsTToo'l^^Hl 

1906-10  1 

1  155  000^^1 

Immigration  from  Ireland  1821-1910 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  GERMANS 

MORE  than  5,250,000  people  have  been  con- 
tributed to  our  population  by  Germany  in 
the  last  ninety  years.  Deducting  the  Poles  from 
eastern  Prussia,  and  counting  Germans  from 
Russia,  Austria,  Bohemia,  and  eastern  Switzer- 
land, we  have,  no  doubt,  received  more  than  7,000,- 
000  whose  mother-tongue  was  the  speech  of  Luther 
and  Goethe.  It  is  probable  that  German  blood 
has  come  to  be  at  least  a  fourth  part  of  the  cur- 
rent in  the  veins  of  the  white  people  of  this  coun- 
try, so  that  this  infusion  alone  equals  the  total 
volume  of  Spanish  and  Portuguese  blood  in  South 
America. 

From  its  rise  in  the  thirties  until  after  our 
Civil  War,  the  stream  of  immigrants  from  Ger- 
many fluctuated  with  religious  and  political  con- 
ditions on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  rather 
than  with  economic  conditions  on  this  side.  Be- 
tween 1839  and  1845  numerous  Old  Lutherans,  re- 
senting the  attempt  of  their  king  to  unite  the 
Lutheran  and  the  Reformed  faiths,  migrated 
hither  from  Pomerania  and  Brandenburg.  The 
political  reaction  in  the  German  states  after  the 
revolution  of  1830,  and  again  after  the  revolution 
of  1848,  brought  tens  of  thousands  of  liberty-lov- 

46 


THE  GEEMANS 


47 


ers.  In  1851,  in  a  book  of  advice  to  intending 
immigrants,  Pastor  Bogen  of  Bosten  set  forth  as 
the  chief  inducement  to  migrate  the  freedom  the 
Germans  would  enjoy  in  America — freedom  from 
oppression  and  despotism,  from  privileged  orders 
and  monopolies,  from  intolerable  imposts  and 
taxes,  from  constraint  in  matters  of  conscience, 
from  restrictions  on  settling  anywhere  in  this 
country  of  "exhaustless  resources." 

The  political  exiles  famous  as  the  **Forty- 
eighters"  included  many  men  of  unusual  attain- 
ments and  character,  who  almost  at  once  became 
leaders  of  the  German-Americans,  exercising  an 
influence  quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  numbers. 
These  university  professors,  physicians,  journal- 
ists, and  even  aristocrats,  aroused  many  of  their 
fellow-countrymen  to  feel  a  pride  in  German  cul- 
ture, and  they  left  a  stamp  of  political  idealism, 
social  radicalism,  and  religious  skepticism  which 
is  slow  to  be  effaced. 

Thanks  to  the  Hausfrau  ideal  for  women  and 
to  the  militarist  demand  for  recruits,  the  German 
people  has  until  recently  persevered  in  a  truly 
medieval  fecundity.  Despite  an  outflow  of 
6,500,000  between  1820  and  1893,  population  has 
doubled  in  seventy  years  and  trebled  in  a  hun- 
dred. Prince  Biilow  complains  that  "the  Poles 
of  eastern  Prussia  multiply  like  rabbits,  while  we 
Germans  multiply  like  hares."  The  fact  is,  a 
generation  ago  the  Germans,  too,  were  multiply- 
ing like  rabbits.  This  is  the  reason  why  during 
the  seventies  and  eighties,  although  political  con- 


48     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


ditions  had  much  improved,  great  numbers  of 
farm-laborers,  female  servants,  handicraftsmen, 
small  tradesmen,  and  other  members  of  the  hum- 
bler classes,  streamed  out  of  crowded  Germany 
in  the  hope  of  improving  their  material  condi- 
tion. The  peasant  living  on  black  bread  and  po- 
tatoes heard  of  and  longed  for  the  white  bread  and 
fleshpots  of  the  American  West.  Although  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  1,500,000  Germans 
who  immigrated  during  the  eighties  represented 
the  lower  economic  strata,  they  came  in  with  fair 
schooling,  considerable  industrial  skill,  and,  on 
an  average,  three  times  as  much  money  as  the 
Slav,  Hebrew,  or  South  European  shows  to-day 
at  Ellis  Island. 

The  German  influx  dropped  sharply  as  soon  as 
the  panic  of  1893  broke  out,  and  when,  after  four 
and  a  half  years  of  economic  submergence,  this 
country  struggled  to  the  surface,  the  tide  of  Teu- 
tons was  not  ready  to  flow  again.  America's  free 
land  was  gone,  and  ruder  peoples,  with  lower 
standards  of  living,  were  crowding  into  her  labor 
markets.  In  the  meantime,  Germany's  extraor- 
dinary rise  as  a  manufacturing  country,  her  suc- 
cesses in  foreign  trade,  and  her  wonderful  system 
of  protection  and  insurance  for  her  labor  popula- 
tion, had  made  her  sons  and  daughters  loath  to 
migrate  oversea.  The  immigration  from  Ger- 
many into  the  United  States  is  virtually  a  closed 
chapter,  and  has  been  so  for  twenty  years.  Such 
Germans  as  now  arrive  hail  chiefly  from  Austria 
and  Eussia. 


THE  GERMANS 


49 


DISTRIBUTION  THROUGHOUT  THE  STATES 

No  other  foreign  element  is  so  generally  dis- 
tributed over  the  United  States  as  the  Germans. 
A  third  of  them  are  between  Boston  and  Pitts- 
burgh, fifty-five  per  cent,  live  between  Pittsburgh 
and  Denver,  seven  per  cent,  are  in  the  South,  and 
five  per  cent,  are  in  the  far  West. 

In  the  South  they  are  more  numerous  than  any 
other  non-native  element.  They  predominate,  ex- 
cept in  New  England,  where  the  Irish  abound ;  in 
States  along  the  northern  border,  into  which  filter 
many  Canadians ;  in  the  Dakotas,  where  the  Scan- 
dinavians lead ;  in  the  Mormon  States,  with  their 
many  converts  from  England;  and  in  Louisiana 
and  Florida,  with  their  Italians  and  Cubans.  In 
Milwaukee  nearly  half  the  people  are  of  German 
parentage,  in  Cincinnati  a  quarter,  in  St.  Louis 
a  fifth.  A  third  of  the  Germans  are  in  the  rural 
districts,  whereas  all  but  a  sixth  of  the  Irish  are 
in  cities.  Whether  one  considers  their  distribu- 
tion among  the  States,  their  partition  between  city 
and  country,  or  their  dispersion  among  the  call- 
ings, the  Germans  will  be  found  to  be  the  most 
pervasive  element  so  far  added  to  our  people. 

ASSIMILATION  WITH  NEW  NEIGHBORS 

Unlike  the  Irish  immigrants,  the  Germans 
brought  a  language,  literature,  and  social  customs 
of  their  own;  so  that,  although  when  scattered 
they  Americanized  with  great  rapidity,  wherever 
they  were  strong  enough  to  maintain  churches  and 


50     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


schools  in  their  own  tongue  they  were  slow  to  take 
the  American  stamp.  For  the  sake  of  their  be- 
loved DeutscJitum,  about  the  middle  of  the  last 
century  the  promoters  of  this  migration  dreamed 
of  creating  in  the  West  a  German  state  where 
Germans  should  hold  sway  and  hand  down  their 
culture  in  all  its  purity.  Missouri,  Illinois, 
Texas,  and  later  Wisconsin,  seemed  to  hold  out 
such  a  hope.  But  the  immigrants  would  not  re- 
main massed,  the  Yankees  pushed  in,  and  "Little 
Germany"  never  found  a  place  on  the  map. 

After  1870  the  Teutonic  overflow  was  prompted 
by  economic  motives,  and  such  a  migration  shows 
little  persistence  in  flying  the  flag  of  its  national 
culture.  Numbers  came,  little  instructed,  or  else 
bringing  a  knowledge  of  Old  Testament  worthies 
rather  than  of  German  poets,  musicians,  and  art- 
ists. In  the  words  of  a  German-American, 
Knortz :  * ' Nine-tenths  of  all  German  immigrants 
come  from  humble  circumstances  and  have  had 
only  an  indifferent  schooling.  Whoever,  there- 
fore, expects  pride  in  their  German  descent  from 
these  people,  who  owe  everything  to  their  new 
country  and  nothing  to  their  fatherland,  simply 
expects  too  much." 

The  * '  Forty-eighters "  had  given  a  great  stim- 
ulus to  all  German  forms  of  life, — schools,  press, 
stage,  festivals,  choral  societies,  and  gymnastic 
societies, — but  since  the  passing  of  these  leaders 
and  the  subsidence  of  the  Teutonic  freshet, 
Deutschtum  has  been  on  the  wane.  German 
newspapers  are  disappearing,  German-American 


THE  GERMANS 


51 


books  and  journals  become  fewer,  German  book 
stores  are  failing,  German  theaters  are  closing, 
and  the  surviving  German  private  schools  may  be 
counted  on  the  fingers.  Probably  not  more  than 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  children  of  German  parentage 
hear  anything  but  English  spoken  at  home. 
Champions  of  Deutschtum  admit  sadly  that  noth- 
ing but  a  strong  current  of  immigration  can  pre- 
serve it  here.  The  spreading  German-American 
National  AlKance  is  bringing  about  a  marked  re- 
vival, but  hardly  will  it  succeed  in  persuading  the 
majority  of  its  people  to  lay  upon  their  children 
the  burden  of  a  bi-lingual  education.  It  is  the  ap- 
parent destiny  of  the  descendants  of  the  myriads 
of  Germans  who  have  settled  here  to  lose  them- 
selves in  the  American  people,  and  to  take  the 
stamp  of  a  culture  which  is,  in  origin  at  least, 
eighty  per  cent.  British. 

It  is  no  small  tribute  to  the  solvent  power 
of  American  civilization  that  the  stable  and  con- 
servative Germans,  who,  as  settlers  in  Transyl- 
vania, in  Chili,  or  in  Palestine,  among  the  Rus- 
sians on  the  lower  Volga,  or  among  the  Portuguese 
in  southern  Brazil,  are  careful  to  keep  them- 
selves unspotted  from  the  people  about  them,  have 
proved,  on  the  whole,  easy  to  Americanize.  Years 
ago,  Prof.  James  Bryce,  just  back  from  Ararat, 
after  noting  the  purity  of  the  German  culture  pre- 
served by  the  Swabian  colony  in  Tiflis,  added : 

It  was  very  curious  to  contrast  this  complete  per- 
sistence of  Teutonism  here  with  the  extremely  rapid 
absorption  of  the  Germans  among  other  citizens  which 


52     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


one  sees  going  on  in  those  towns  of  the  Western  States 
of  America,  where — as  in  Milwaukee,  for  instance — the 
inhabitants  are  mostly  Germans,  and  still  speak  Eng- 
lish with  a  markedly  foreign  accent.  .  .  .  Here  they 
are  exiles  from  a  higher  civilization  planted  in  the 
midst  of  a  lower  one ;  there  they  lose  themselves  among 
a  kindred  people,  with  whose  ideas  and  political  institu- 
tions they  quickly  come  to  sympathize. 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  GERMANS  IN  AMERICA 

The  leanness  of  his  home  acres  taught  the  Ger- 
man to  make  the  most  of  his  farm  in  the  New 
World.  The  immigrant  looked  for  good  land 
rather  than  for  land  easy  to  subdue.  Knowing 
that  a  heavy  forest  growth  proclaims  rich  soil,  he 
shunned  the  open  areas,  and  chopped  his  home- 
,stead  out  of  the  densest  woods.  While  the  Amer- 
ican farmer,  in  his  haste  to  live  well,  mined  the 
fertility  out  of  the  soil,  the  German  conserved  it 
by  rotating  crops  and  feeding  live  stock.  In  car- 
ing for  his  domestic  animals,  he  set  an  example. 
Just  as  the  county  agricultural  fair,  and  the  state 
fair  as  well,  is  the  development  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vania-German JaJirmarkt,  and  the  "prairie 
schooner"  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  "Con- 
estoga  wagon,"  so  the  capacious  red  barns  of  the 
Middle  West  trace  their  ancestry  back  to  the  big 
bam  which  the  Pennsylvania  "Dutchman"  pro- 
vided at  a  time  when  most  farmers  let  their  stock 
run  unsheltered. 

Thanks  partly  to  good  farming  and  frugal  liv- 
ing, and  partly  to  the  un-American  practice  of 
working  their  women  in  the  fields,  the  German 


THE  GERMANS 


53 


farmers  made  money,  bought  choice  acres  from 
under  their  neighbors'  feet,  and  so  kept  other  na- 
tionalities on  the  move.  This  is  the  reason  why 
a  German  settlement  spreads  on  fat  soil  and  why 
in  time  the  best  land  in  the  region  is  likely  to 
come  into  German  hands.  Unlike  the  restless 
American,  with  his  ears  ever  pricked  to  the  hail 
of  distant  opportunity,  the  phlegmatic  German 
identifies  himself  with  his  farm,  and  feels  a  pride 
in  keeping  it  in  the  family  generation  after  gen- 
eration. Taking  fewer  chances  in  the  lottery  of 
life  than  his  enterprising  Scotch-Irish  or  limber- 
minded  Yankee  neighbor,  he  has  drawn  from  it 
fewer  big  prizes,  but  also  fewer  blanks. 

In  quest  of  vinous  exhilaration,  our  grand- 
fathers stood  at  a  bar  pouring  down  ardent 
spirits.  It  is  owing  to  our  German  element  that 
the  mild  lager  beer  has  largely  displaced  whisky 
as  the  popular  beverage,  while  sedentary  drink- 
ing steadily  gains  on  perpendicular  drinking. 
Because  the  toping  of  beer  has  from  time  im- 
memorial been  interwoven  with  their  social  en- 
joyments, and  because  beer,  unlike  whisky,  makes 
wassailers  fraternal  rather  than  wild  and  quar- 
relsome, the  Germans,  supported  by  the  Bohe- 
mians, have  offered,  in  the  name  of  "personal 
liberty,"  the  most  determined  opposition  to  liq- 
uor legislation.  They  may  renounce  the  bowl, 
but  taken  away  it  shall  not  be!  In  their  loyalty 
to  beer,  these  Teutons  out-German  their  cousins 
in  the  Fatherland,  who  are  of  late  turning  from 
the  national  beverage  at  an  astonishing  rate.  At 


54     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


the  World's  Fair  in  St.  Louis  a  number  of  Ameri- 
can scholars  who  had  studied  of  yore  in  German 
universities  gave  a  luncheon  to  the  visiting  Ger- 
man economists.  Out  of  respect  for  their  guests, 
the  hosts  all  filled  the  mugs  of  their  student  days ; 
but,  to  their  astonishment,  the  Germans  called 
unanimously  for  iced  tea ! 

The  influence  of  the  Germans  in  spreading 
among  us  the  love  of  good  music  and  good  drama 
is  acknowledged  by  all.  But  there  is  a  more  sub- 
tle transformation  that  they  have  wrought  on 
American  taste.  The  social  diversions  of  the 
Teutons,  and  their  affirmance  of  the  "joy  of  liv- 
ing, ' '  have  helped  to  clear  from  our  eyes  the  Puri- 
tan jaundice  that  made  all  physical  and  social  en- 
joyment look  sinful.  If  "innocent  recreation" 
and  "harmless  amusement"  are  now  phrases  to 
conjure  with,  it  is  largely  owing  to  the  Germans 
and  Bohemians,  with  their  love  of  song  and  mirth 
and  "having  a  good  time."  Few  of  the  present 
generation  realize  that  fifty  years  ago  the  prin- 
cipal place  of  amusement  in  the  American  town, 
although  as  innocent  of  opera  as  a  Kaffir  kraal, 
called  itself  the  "opera-house,"  in  order  to  avoid 
the  damning  stigma  the  reigning  Puritanism  had 
attached  to  the  word  "theater." 

As  voters,  the  Germans  have  shown  little  clan- 
nishness.  Their  partizanship  has  not  been 
bigoted,  and  by  their  insistence  on  independent 
voting  they  have  perplexed  and  disgusted  the 
politicians.  Before  1850,  they  saw  in  the  Demo- 
cratic party  the  champion  of  the  liberties  for  the 


THE  GERMANS 


57 


sake  of  which  they  had  expatriated  themselves. 
But  when  the  slavery  issue  came  to  be  over- 
shadowing, the  *'Forty-eighters"  were  able  to 
swing  them  to  the  newly  formed  Republican 
party,  to  which,  on  the  whole,  they  have  remained 
faithful,  although  in  some  States  their  loyalty 
has  been  much  shaken  by  prohibition.  On  money 
questions  the  Germans  have  been  conservative. 
Bringing  with  them  the  notion  of  an  efficient  civil 
service,  they  have  despised  office-mongering  and 
have  befriended  the  merit  system.  No  immi- 
grants have  been  more  apt  to  look  at  public 
questions  from  a  common-welfare  point  of  view 
and  to  vote  for  their  principles  rather  than 
for  their  friends.  If  by  "political  aptitude"  is 
meant  the  skill  to  use  politics  for  private  advan- 
tage, then  in  this  capacity  the  German  must  be 
ranked  low  among  our  foreign-born. 

In  the  way  of  civil  and  political  liberty,  the 
Germans  added  nothing  to  the  old-English  heri- 
tage they  found  here;  but  in  freedom  of  thought 
their  contribution  has  been  invaluable.  Where 
there  is  no  church,  state,  or  upper  class  to  hold  it 
in  check,  the  community  is  likely  to  show  itself  im- 
perious toward  the  nonconformist.  The  New 
England  Puritan,  who  was  oak  to  any  civil  author- 
ity that  he  had  not  helped  to  constitute,  was  a  reed 
before  the  pressure  of  community  opinion.  The 
sturdy  Germans  flouted  this  tyranny  sans  tyrant. 
At  a  time  when  the  would-be-respectable  Ameri- 
can stifled  under  a  pall  of  conventionality  in  re- 
gard to  religion  and  manners,  they  asserted  the 


58     THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


rigM  to  think  and  speak  for  themselves  without 
incurring  loss  or  ostracism.  Then,  too,  the 
scholarly  German  immigrant  imparted  to  us  his 
sense  of  the  dignity  of  science  and  its  right  to 
be  free,  although,  to  be  sure,  this  spirit  has  been 
fostered  among  us  chiefly  by  Americans  who  have 
studied  in  German  universities.  On  the  whole, 
in  the  way  of  intellectual  liberty,  the  university- 
bred  Liberals  of  1848  had  as  much  to  otfer  as  they 
gained  in  the  way  of  political  liberty. 

THE  GEEMANS  IN  THE  CIVEL  WAE 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  the  Germans, 
with  their  deep  detestation  of  slavery,  played  no 
small  role.  In  the  South,  those  of  later  immigra- 
tion opposed  the  Confederacy ;  in  the  North  their 
leaders  lined  them  up  solidly  in  support  of  the 
Union.  About  200,000  Germans  enlisted  in  the 
Union  army,  more  than  there  were  of  Irish  vol- 
unteers, although  the  Irish  were  more  numerous 
in  the  population  of  the  loyal  States.  The  militia 
companies  formed  among  the  Germans  in  Mis- 
souri, especially  in  St.  Louis,  were  pivotal  in  sav- 
ing that  State  for  the  Union.  The  military 
knowledge  of  Prussians  who  had  seen  service  in 
the  old  country  was  valued,  sometimes  over- 
valued, in  the  earlier  stage  of  the  conflict.  The 
all-German  divisions  of  Steinwehr  and  Schurz, 
after  being  roundly,  perhaps  unjustly,  abused  for 
not  holding  Jackson  at  Chancellorsville,  fought 
well  at  Gettysburg  and  distinguished  themselves 
in  the  "battle  among  the  clouds." 


THE  GERMANS 


59 


THE  GEEMANS  IN"  THE  STRUGGLE  FOE  EXISTENCE 

Probably  no  compliment  has  ever  been  be- 
stowed on  the  Germans  in  America  that  did  not 
contain  the  words  "industrious  and  thrifty." 
Nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  members  of  a  race  so 
forelooking  and  reflective  rarely  sink  into  the 
mire  of  poverty.  In  1900,  the  Germans  were  25.8 
per  cent,  of  our  foreign-born,  and  three  years 
later  it  was  found  that  only  23.3  per  cent,  of  the 
foreign-bom  in  our  almshouses  were  Germans. 
For  the  country  at  large,  we  have  no  means  of 
comparing  the  German  with  the  American  in  his 
ability  to  take  care  of  himself;  but  studies  made 
in  Boston  showed  that  the  proportion  of  Boston 
Germans  in  the  city  almshouse  was  half  that 
of  the  English  in  that  city,  one-sixth  of  that  of 
the  Scotch,  and  only  one-tenth  of  that  of  the  Irish. 
In  the  state  charitable  institutions  of  Massachu- 
setts, Germans  make  a  better  showing  than  Celts, 
but  not  so  good  a  showing  as  Scandinavians  and 
Americans. 

To  the  various  relief  agencies  in  Boston,  Ger- 
mans apply  less  often  than  any  other  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking immigrants.  The  analyst  of  Bos- 
ton's foreign-born  is  struck  by  the  small  number 
of  Germans  and  Scandinavians  who  seek  aid,  and 
says: 

Occasionally,  it  is  true,  idle  and  shiftless  families  are 
found  among  both  these  peoples;  but  on  the  whole  they 
are  industrious  and  thrifty,  and  less  hopeless  poverty 
is  found  among  them  than  among  almost  any  of  the 


60     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


other  foreign  immigrants.  .  .  .  The  Germans  are  with- 
out doubt  the  best  type  of  immigrants  which  has  set- 
tled in  Boston. 

In  our  cities,  no  other  element  has  so  large  a 
proportion  of  home-owners,  and  in  the  care  of  the 
home  they  surpass  all  other  nationalities  save 
the  Swedes. 

ALCOHOLISM  AMONG  THE  GERMANS 

The  saturation  of  the  social  life  of  our  Ger- 
mans with  the  amber  beverage,  as  well  as  their 
hostility  to  prohibition,  prepares  us  to  find  alco- 
holism very  common  among  the  disciples  of  St. 
Gambrinus.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  in  point 
of  sobriety  hardly  any  North  European  makes  so 
good  a  record  as  the  German.  A  few  years  ago 
an  analysis  of  2075  charity  cases  showed  that 
drink  as  the  cause  of  poverty  occurred  only  one- 
half  as  often  among  the  German  cases  as  among 
the  Irish,  and  two-thirds  as  often  as  among  native 
American  cases.  In  the  charity  hospitals  of 
New  York,  the  proportion  of  German  patients 
treated  for  alcoholism  is  only  half  as  large  as  that 
of  the  English  and  the  native  Americans,  and  only 
a  third  as  great  as  that  of  the  Irish.  The  charity 
workers  in  our  cities  report  that  **  intemperance 
of  the  bread-winner"  is  less  often  found  to  be  the 
cause  of  destitution  among  the  German  appli- 
cants than  among  those  of  any  other  North- 
European  nationality.  Among  alien  prisoners 
only  one  German  of  twenty-two  was  committed 
for  intoxication  as  against  one  out  of  three 


THE  GERMANS 


61 


Irish,  one  out  of  four  French  Canadians,  one  out 
of  five  Scotch,  and  one  out  of  eight  Scandinavi- 
ans. On  the  other  hand,  the  victims  of  drink  are 
far  more  numerous  among  them  than  among  the 
Italians,  Magyars,  Jews,  and  Syrians.  These 
peoples,  vine-growers  and  wine-bibbers  from 
time  immemorial,  have  had  the  chance  to  get 
drunk  many  thousand  years  longer  than  the  Celts 
and  Teutons;  hence  they  have  been  more  com- 
pletely purged  of  their  alcoholics.  While  a  light 
beverage  like  beer  produces  fewer  sots  and 
wrecks  than  the  "water  of  life"  so  grateful  to 
the  Northern  palate,  it  produces  a  vast  unre- 
ported stupefying  and  deterioration;  so  there  is 
good  reason  why  the  German  drinking  customs 
are  being  sloughed  off  in  the  Fatherland  at  the 
very  moment  they  are  being  warmly  defended  in 
America. 

AMOUNT  OF  CRIME  NORMAL  AMONG  GERMANS 

The  striking  thing  about  the  abnormality  of 
the  Germans  is  its  normality  in  amount.  Among 
the  foreign-born,  the  Germans  have  just  about 
their  due  share  of  insanity,  neither  less  nor  more. 
Likewise,  the  marked  feature  of  German  crime 
in  this  country  is  simply  its  featurelessness. 
Among  the  twelve  thousand-odd  aliens  in  our 
prisons,  the  German  prisoners  run  a  little  above 
the  average  in  their  bent  for  gainful  offenses  and 
a  little  below  the  average  in  their  crimes  of  vio- 
lence. In  their  leaning  to  other  offenses  they 
come  close  to  the  mean.    Among  the  twenty  na- 


62     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


tionalities  that  figure  in  the  police  arrests  of 
Chicago,  the  German  stands,  with  respect  to  al- 
most every  form  of  misconduct,  near  the  middle 
of  the  list.  The  French  and  the  Hebrews  stand 
out  in  bad  eminence  as  offenders  against  chastity, 
the  Italians  lead  in  murder  and  blackmail,  the 
Americans  in  burglary,  the  Greeks  in  kidnapping, 
the  Lithuanians  in  assault,  the  Irish  in  disorderly 
conduct.  But  the  German  lacks  distinction  in 
evil,  never  coming  near  either  the  top  or  the  bot- 
tom of  the  scale  in  predilection  for  any  form  of 
crime.  On  the  whole,  his  criminal  bent  is  very 
close  to  that  of  the  native  American. 

WIDE  VARIETY  OF  OCCUPATION 

The  Germans  brought  us  much  more  in  the  way 
of  industrial  skill  and  professional  training  than 
the  Irish ;  besides,  they  were  much  more  success- 
ful in  planting  themselves  upon  the  soil.  They 
tended  far  more  to  farming  and  manufacturing, 
far  less  to  domestic  and  personal  service  and 
transportation.  The  second  generation  shows  no 
marked  drift  away  from  the  farm.  In  1900, 
three-fifths  of  all  brewers  in  the  country  were 
Germans,  a  third  of  the  bakers  and  cabinet-mak- 
ers, a  fifth  of  the  saloon-keepers  and  butchers,  a 
sixth  of  the  hatters,  tailors,  and  coopers,  and  a 
seventh  of  the  musicians  and  teachers  of  music. 
Yet  only  one  male  bread-winner  out  of  nineteen 
was  a  German. 

The  sons  of  Germans  are  a  sixteenth  of  our 
male  labor  force;  but  they  furnish  a  quarter  of 


THE  GERMANS 


63 


the  trunk-and-satchel  makers,  a  fifth  of  the 
bottlers,  stovemakers,  and  engravers,  and  a 
sixth  of  the  upholsterers,  bookbinders,  paper- 
box  makers,  butchers,  brewers,  and  brass-work- 
ers. In  our  cities  the  German  baker,  tailor, 
butcher,  cabinet-maker,  or  engraver  is  quite  as 
characteristic  and  familiar  a  figure  as  the  Irish 
drayman,  fireman,  brakeman,  section  boss,  street- 
car conductor,  plumber,  or  policeman. 

The  immigrant  German  women  begin  rather 
higher  in  the  scale  of  occupation  than  the  Irish, 
but  their  daughters  do  not  rise  in  life  with  such 
amazing  buoyancy  as  do  the  daughters  of  the 
Irish.  Between  the  first-generation  and  the  sec- 
ond-generation Germans  the  proportion  of  serv- 
ants and  waitresses  falls  from  a  third  of  all  female 
bread-winners  to  a  quarter.  For  the  Irish  the 
drop  is  from  fifty-four  per  cent,  to  sixteen  per 
cent.  The  second-generation  Germans  do  not 
show  such  an  advance  on  their  parents  as  do  the 
second-generation  Irish,  who  bob  up  like  corks  re- 
leased at  the  bottom  of  a  stream. 

TEUTONIC  TKAITS 

Physically  the  German  is  strong,  but  often  too 
stocky  for  grace.  A  blend  with  the  taller  and 
thinner  American  is  likely  to  give  good  results  in 
figure.  Being  slow  in  response,  he  makes  a  poor 
showing  in  competitive  sports.  His  forte  is 
gymnastics  rather  than  athletics,  and  he  is  to  be 
found  in  the  indoor,  sedentary  trades  rather  than 
in  the  active,  outdoor  callings.    Not  often  will 


64     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


you  come  upon  him  riveting  trusses  far  up  on  the 
skyscraper  or  the  railway  bridge.  His  pleasures 
he  takes  sitting  rather  than  moving,  so  that  he 
haunts  summer-garden  and  picnic-ground  rather 
than  base-ball  diamond  and  bowling-alley.  For 
all  his  traditional  domesticity,  he  is  a  sociable 
soul,  and  will  lug  off  his  entire  family  to  a  public 
resort,  when  an  American  would  prefer  a  pipe  by 
the  fireside.  He  is  fond  of  the  table,  and  loves 
to  enjoy  talk,  music,  or  drama  while  eating  and 
drinking.  In  comparison  with  the  native  Ameri- 
cans, or  the  Celts  from  the  British  Isles,  the 
Germans  in  America  have  the  name  of  being  ma- 
terialistic. If  this  be  true,  it  is  doubtless  due  to 
the  small  representation  among  them  of  that  noble 
leavening  type  that  has  made  the  spiritual  great- 
ness of  Germany.  Any  one  who  has  lived  in  the 
old  country  knows  that  there  is  a  kind  of  German 
that  one  rarely  sees  among  our  fellow-citizens.  Of 
such  were  the  "  Forty-eighters " ;  but  as  their  in- 
fluence fades,  the  idealism  they  fanned  dies  down, 
and  visitors  from  the  Fatherland  complain  that 
America  has  stamped  its  dollar-mark  all  over  the 
souls  of  their  kinsmen  here.  Professor  Hugo 
Miinsterberg,  an  impartial  observer,  judges  that 
**the  average  German- American  stands  below  the 
level  of  the  average  German  at  home. ' ' 

But  if  he  chases  the  dollar,  let  us  grant  that  he 
does  it  in  his  own  way.  Honest  and  stable,  he 
puts  little  faith  in  short-cuts  to  riches,  such  as 

scream"  advertising,  commercial  humbug, 
''faked"  news,  thimblerig  finance,  or  political 


THE  GERMANS 


65 


graft.  He  does  not  count  on  skipping  many 
rungs  in  the  ladder  of  success.  German  business 
enterprises  grow  slowly,  but  if  you  probe  them, 
you  find  a  solid  texture.  The  German  is  hard- 
headed,  and  is  not  easily  borne  otf  his  feet  by  the 
contagion  of  example.  To  speculative  fever  and 
to  made  panic  he  is  rather  immune.  Because  he 
is  less  mobile  than  the  American  and  does  not 
shift  from  one  thing  to  another,  he  is  more  apt  to 
gain  skill  and  turn  out  good  work.  Then,  too,  he 
is  not  so  keen  to  get  on  that  he  does  not  find  the 
artist's  enjoyment  and  pride  in  the  practice  of 
his  craft.  In  a  word,  the  Germans  act  in  Amer- 
ican society  as  a  neutral  substance  moderating 
the  action  of  an  overlively  ferment.  For  the 
universal  eagerness  to  be  "wide  awake"  and 
"up  to  date"  has  deposed  habit,  tradition,  and 
external  authority  as  lords  of  life  among  us. 

The  German  is  lasting  in  his  sympathies  and 
his  antipathies  and  leisurely  in  his  mental  proc- 
esses. It  takes  him  long  to  make  up  his  mind 
and  longer  to  get  an  idea  out  of  his  head.  In  his 
thinking  he  tries  to  grasp  more  things  at  a  time 
than  does  the  Celt.  Not  for  him  the  simple  logic 
that  proceeds  from  one  or  two  outstanding  fac- 
tors in  a  situation  and  ignores  all  the  rest.  He  ^ 
wants  to  be  comprehensive  and  final  where  the 
Latin  aims  to  be  merely  clear  and  precise.  It  is 
this  very  complexity  of  thought  that  makes  the 
German  often  silent,  his  speech  heavy  or  con- 
fused. But  just  this  relish  for  details  and  this 
passion  for  thoroughness  make  him  a  born  in- 


66     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


vestigator.  This  is  why,  on  the  practical  side,  the 
German- American  has  most  distinguished  himself 
in  work  that  calls  for  long  and  close  observation, 
such  as  gardening,  viticulture,  breeding,  forestry, 
brewing,  and  the  chemical  industries. 

Thirty  years  ago  there  was  an  outcry  that  the 
Germans  were  introducing  into  this  country  the 
virus  of  anarchism  and  socialism.  It  is  now  clear 
that  German  socialism,  instead  of  being  a  shatter- 
ing type  of  thought,  is  in  fact  highly  constructive. 
However  bold  and  iconoclastic  he  may  be  in  his 
thinking,  the  German,  with  his  respect  for  author- 
ity, his  slow  reaction  to  wrong,  and  his  love  of 
order  and  system,  is  a  conservative  by  nature. 
The  children  of  revolutionary  immigrants  are 
milder  than  their  fathers  were;  and  the  German- 
Americans  are  now  very  far  from  leading  the  van 
of  radicalism. 


1886-30  I  8  000 
1631-35  ^1  49  000 
1836-40  1I093OOI 
I841-4S  1110  0001 
1846-50  I 


1851-55  ■672  400BPOLITICAL  REACTION  IN  GERMaNY^M 
1856-60  ^TeTo^m^HI^B  HARD  TIMES  IN  UNITED  STATES 
1861-65  rgTzToO^^^M    CIVIL  WAR  IN  UNITED  STATES 
1866-70  I 
1871-75  I 

1876-80  l^a^O^jBBi   HARD  TIMES  IN  UNITED  STATES 
1881-85  I 
1886-90  I 

1881-05  ■  432  feOO'^M'GERMANY  | 
legfe-lgOOl  120  l°OB      HARD  TIMES  IN  UNITED  STATES 
1801-05  OHHI^^H 
•906-10  [zT^F^^B 

Immigration  from  Germany,  Netherlands,  and  Switzerland, 
1826-1910 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS 

ALTHOUGH  Leif  Ericson  discovered  Amer- 
ica in  the  year  1000  a.  d.,  his  countrymen 
made  no  serious  use  of  his  find  until  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  only  sixty- 
four  years  since  the  memorable  visit  of  **the 
Swedish  Nightingale,"  Jenny  Lind,  opened  our 
eyes  to  the  existence  of  the  Northern  peoples.  In 
fact,  the  few  thousands  that  about  this  time  be- 
gan to  filter  in  were  first  known  as  "Jenny  Lind 
men."  Now  there  are  among  us  a  million  and  a 
quarter  born  in  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Denmark, 
and,  counting  those  of  Scandinavian  parentage 
and  grandparentage,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  a  quar- 
ter of  all  this  blood  in  the  world  is  west  of  the  At-  ■ 
lantic. 

In  1874  the  Icelanders  celebrated  the  millennial 
anniversary  of  the  settlement  of  Iceland,  and  only 
year  before  last  certain  of  our  fellow-citizens  were 
commemorating  the  millennial  anniversary  of  the 
cession  of  Normandy  to  Rollo  the  Dane.  In  all 
the  thousand  years  since  these  colonizations, 
there  has  been  no  diffusion  of  Gothic  blood  to 
compare  with  the  settlement  in  this  country  of 
nearly  two  million  Scandinavian  immigrants. 

67 


68     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Sweden  has  sent  the  most,  but  Norway  has  con- 
tributed a  larger  proportion  of  her  people  than 
any  other  country  save  Ireland.  There  are  cer- 
tainly half  as  many  of  Norse  blood  here  as  there 
are  in  the  fatherland,  and  they  own  six  times  as 
much  farming  land.  A  Norwegian  economist  es- 
timates that  the  property  owned  by  his  compatri- 
ots in  this  country  corresponds  in  value  to  the 
entire  national  economy  of  Norway. 

The  crest  of  the  Scandinavian  wave  passed 
thirty  years  ago.  The  current  runs  still,  but  it 
is  a  flow  of  job-seekers  rather  than  of  home-seek- 
ers. America  is  no  longer  so  attractive  to  the 
land-hungry;  besides,  their  home  conditions  have 
greatly  improved.  By  their  wonderful  develop- 
ment of  rural  cooperation,  the  Danes  have  made 
themselves  the  most  envied  of  European  peasant 
farmers.  By  harnessing  their  waterfalls,  the 
Norwegians  have  gained  a  basis  for  new  indus- 
tries. The  Swedes  have  drawn  the  power  of  half 
a  million  horses  from  their  streams,  and  their 
multiplying  factories  take  on  about  ten  thousand 
new  hands  every  year. 

mSTKIBUTION  OF  SCANDINAVIAN  BLOOD 

The  old  Northwest,  streaching  from  Detroit  to 
Omaha,  and  thence  north  to  the  boundary,  has 
been  the  Scandinaviaji's  ''land  of  Goshen." 
Here  is  the  "New  Sweden"  that  Gustavus  Adol- 
phus  dreamed  of  when  he  planned  a  Swedish  col- 
ony on  the  Delaware.  In  1850,  when  there  were 
only  thirteen  thousand  of  her  race  in  that  region, 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  69 


Frederika  Bremer  then  in  St.  Paul  had  the  vision 
of  a  Cumaean  sibyl : 

"What  a  glorious  new  Scandinavia  might  not  Minne- 
sota become !  Here  would  the  Swede  find  again  his 
clear,  romantic  lakes,  the  plains  of  Scania  rich  in  com, 
and  the  valleys  of  Norrland ;  here  would  the  Norwegian 
find  his  rapid  rivers,  his  lofty  mountains,  for  I  would 
include  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  Oregon  in  the  new 
kingdom ;  and  both  nations  their  hunting-fields  and  their 
fisheries.  The  Danes  might  here  pasture  their  flocks 
and  herds  and  lay  out  their  farms  on  less  misty  coasts 
than  those  of  Denmark  The  climate,  the  situa- 
tion, the  character  of  the  scenery  agree  with  our  peo- 
ple better  than  that  of  any  other  of  the  American 
States. 

It  is  a  striking  fulfilment  of  her  prophecy  that 
to-day  a  fifth  of  the  Scandinavian  blood  in  the 
world  is  in  this  very  region.  Fifty  years  ago 
Wisconsin  led,  with  her  great  Norwegian  contin- 
gent; then  Minnesota  passed  her,  and  later  Illi- 
nois, with  Chicago  as  the  lodestone.  To-day  two- 
fifths  of  the  people  of  Minnesota  are  of  Scandi- 
navian strain.  Northern  Iowa  has  a  strong  in- 
fusion of  the  blood,  while  the  Dakotas  are  deeply 
tinged.  In  1870  four-fifths  of  all  our  Scandina- 
vians were  in  this  region.  The  proportion  fell 
slowly  to  three-fourths  in  1880,  five-sevenths  in 
1890,  two-thirds  in  1900,  and  three-fifths  in  1910. 
Of  late  many  have  dropped  into  the  ranks  of 
clanging  industrialism  between  Pawtucket  and 
Pittsburgh,  while  the  current  of  home-seekers 
into  the  new  Northwest  has  given  Washington 


70     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


and  Oregon  as  many  Scandinavians  as  there  are 
in  the  Dakotas. 

SOCIAL  CHAEACTEEISTICS 

Like  the  immigrants  from  Great  Britain,  the 
Scandinavians  came  with  a  male  preponderance 
of  about  three-fifths.  About  a  quarter  of  them 
were  servants  at  home,  a  third  were  common  la- 
borers, and  a  sixth  were  skilled  laborers.  They 
have  brought  far  less  skill  than  the  British,  and 
distinctly  less  than  the  Germans  and  the  Bohemi- 
ans. 

In  point  of  literacy  they  lead  the  world.  One 
finds  an  illiterate  among  every  twenty  German 
immigrants  of  more  than  fourteen  years  of  age. 
Of  immigrants  from  other  nations,  one  may  find 
an  illiterate  among  every  twenty-three  Dutch, 
thirty-eight  Irish,  fifty-two  Welsh,  fifty-nine  Bo- 
hemians, seventy-seven  Finns,  one  hundred  Eng- 
lish, and  one  hundred  and  forty-three  Scotch; 
but  the  proportion  among  those  who  come 
from  Scandinavia  is  one  in  two  hundred  and  fifty. 
What  a  contrast  between  these  and  the  Lithuani- 
ans and  South  Italians,  half  of  whom  are  unable 
to  read  any  language ! 

It  is  perhaps  the  strain  of  melancholy  lurking 
in  Northern  blood  that  gives  our  Scandinavians 
a  tendency  toward  insanity  slightly  in  excess  of 
the  foreign-bom  as  a  whole,  and  decidedly 
greater  than  that  of  Americans.  In  susceptibil- 
ity to  tuberculosis  they  make  a  worse  showing 
than  any  others  among  our  foreign-born  save  the 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  71 


Irish.  They  die  of  it  oftener  than  do  their  chil- 
dren born  in  this  country,  but  even  these  suffer 
twice  the  losses  of  their  American  neighbors. 
But  the  scourge  is  still  worse  in  the  old  country; 
so  very  likely  we  have  here  not  a  race  weakness, 
but  a  penalty  for  unhygienic  conditions.  In  the 
bitter  North,  with  the  forests  disappearing,  peo- 
ple came  to  dread  fresh  air,  and  the  trouble  be- 
gan as  soon  as  the  open  hearth  gave  way  to  the 
tight  stove. 

In  our  Northwest  many  Scandinavians  board 
up  or  nail  down  their  windows  for  the  winter,  and 
in  such  homes  one  appreciates  the  mot  evoked  by 
the  query,  ''Why  is  the  country  air  so  puref" 
The  answer  is,  "Because  the  farmers  keep  all  the 
bad  air  shut  up  in  their  houses."  The  second 
generation  are  taking  to  ventilation,  and  in  their 
children  very  likely  the  Hyperboreans'  horror  of 
fresh  air  will  have  wholly  disappeared,  and  with 
it  their  special  susceptibility  to  the  white  plague. 

The  study  of  several  thousand  mixed  mar- 
riages in  Minneapolis  has  led  Professor  Albert 
J enks  of  the  University  of  Minnesota  to  this  con- 
clusion: "The  Irish  blood  tends  to  increase  fe- 
cundity, and  the  Scandinavian  blood  tends  to 
decrease  fecundity,  of  other  peoples  in  amalga- 
mation." Is  this  contrast  due  to  the  Scandina- 
vians being  so  fore-looking,  whereas  the  Irish 
give  little  heed  to  the  future ;  to  the  fact  that  the 
Scandinavians  are  the  purest  Protestants,  while 
the  Irish  are  the  purest  Roman  Catholics;  or 
to  the  coming  together  in  the  Scandinavians  of 


72     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


prudence  and  Protestantism  with  a  high  status 
of  women!  At  any  rate,  such  caution  in  family- 
is  startling  when  one  recalls  that  old  Scandinavia 
was  the  mother  hive  of  the  swarms  of  barbarians 
that  kept  South  Europeans  in  dread  a  thou- 
sand years,  or  notes  what  William  Penn  found 
among  the  Swedes  on  the  Delaware  two  hundred 
and  thirty  years  ago :  * '  They  have  tine  children 
and  almost  every  house  full;  rare  to  find  one  of 
them  without  three  or  four  boys  and  as  many 
girls;  some  six,  seven,  or  eight  sons." 

The  primitive  man  commits  crime  from  pas- 
sion; the  developed  man  commits  more  of  his 
crimes  from  cupidity.  Proverbially  honest,  the 
Scandinavian  is  less  prone  than  the  American  to 
seek  his  living  by  crookedness.  The  gamut  of 
exploit  that  reaches  from  the  Artful  Dodger  to 
Colonel  Sellers  is  alien  to  him.  Nor  is  he  subject 
to  the  wild  impulses  that  often  crop  out  in  the 
Italian  or  the  Slav.  Much  of  his  crime  springs 
from  disorderly  conduct,  and  drink  must  bear 
most  of  the  blame,  for  on  the  Scandinavian  na- 
ture liquor  has  a  disastrous  effect. 

ALCOHOLISM  AMONG  THE  SCANDINAVIANS 

Pytheas  of  Marseilles,  the  explorer  who  about 
the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great  gave  the  world 
its  first  news  of  Norway,  said  that  the  people  of 
Thule  made  from  honey  *  *  a  very  pleasant  drink. ' ' 
This  beverage  could  hardly  have  touched  the 
right  spot,  for  when  the  product  of  the  still 
reached  the  Thulites  they  fell  upon  it  with  the 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  73 


joyous  abandon  of  the  inexperienced.  A  century 
ago  Scandinavia  was  the  home  of  hard  drink- 
ers. Even  yet,  in  our  cities,  the  "toughest"  sa- 
loons are  kept  by  old-time  Norsemen,  who  left 
the  fatherland  before  it  began  to  dry  out.  One 
hears  a  proverb  which  runs,  "What  won't  the 
German  do  for  money  and  the  Swede  for  whisky  I" 
As  charity  seekers  and  hospital  patients,  our 
Scandinavians  are  not  so  alcoholic  as  the 
British,  but  more  so  than  the  Teutons.  More 
and  more,  however,  they  come  to  us  temperate, 
and  strong  believers  in  sumptuary  legislation; 
for  within,  a  generation  Scandinavia  has  become 
the  Sahara  whence  issue  the  desiccating  simooms 
— Gothenburg  system,  samlag  system,  etc., — 
which  have  taken  much  "wet"  territory  off  the 
map. 

FAVOEITE  OCCUPATIONS 

Eugged  Norway  freezes  into  the  souls  of  her 
sons  a  sense  of  the  preciousness  of  level,  fertile 
land,  and  there  are  no  great  cities  to  infect  the 
imagination  of  her  country  dwellers.  What  won- 
der, then,  that  in  1900  nearly  four-fifths  of  our 
Norwegians  were  outside  the  cities,  most  of  them 
sticking  to  the  soil  like  limpets  to  a  rock!  In 
1900  half  of  them  were  tillers,  and  sixty-three  per 
cent,  of  their  grown  sons.  For  the  rest,  they  are 
to  be  found  in  the  forecastles  of  the  great  lakes, 
in  the  copper  and  iron  mines  of  upper  Michigan, 
in  the  coal-mines  of  Iowa,  in  Northern  lumber- 
camps,  where  they  wield  another  pattern  of  ax 


74     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


than  did  their  forbears,  who,  eight  centuries  ago, 
were  known  as  "ax-bearers"  in  the  Eastern  em- 
peror's body-guard.  They  work  in  the  building 
trades,  on  the  railroads,  in  the  flour-mills  of  the 
wheat  centers,  and  in  the  furniture-mills,  the 
plow-wagon-and-implement  factories  of  the  hard- 
wood belt.  From  his  vast  new  circle  of  opportu- 
nities, the  Norwegian  immigrant  chooses  those 
that  enable  him  to  continue  his  life  at  home.  He 
insists  on  getting  his  living  in  connection  with 
soil,  water,  and  wood.  In  the  East  he  shuns  mill 
drudgery,  but  shines  as  a  builder.  A  fourth  part 
of  the  Norwegian  wage-earners  in  New  York  are 
carpenters,  while  none  are  on  the  farms.  In 
Iowa  two-thirds  are  on  the  farms,  and  only  seven 
per  cent,  are  in  the  building  trades. 

Through  the  occupational  choices  of  our  Danes, 
one  can  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  lush  meadows  of 
Jutland.  Forty  per  cent,  of  them  are  on  the 
farm,  ten  per  cent,  are  laborers,  and  four  per 
cent,  are  carpenters.  In  butter-making  and 
dairying  they  are  six  times  as  numerous  as  in  the 
general  work  of  the  country;  in  cabinet-making 
and  before  the  mast  they  are  three  and  one-half 
times  as  strong.  As  stock-raisers  and  drovers, 
the  second  generation  are  five  and  one-half  times 
as  strong  as  they  are  in  other  lines. 

Coming  from  an  industrial  country,  the  Swedes 
bring  skill,  and  show  no  marked  bent  for  agricul- 
ture. Only  thirty  per  cent,  of  them  are  at  the 
plow-tail ;  of  their  sons,  forty-three  per  cent.  The 
rest  will  be  carpenters,  miners,  and  quarrymen, 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  75 


railroad  employees,  machinists,  iron-  and  steel- 
workers,  tailors,  and  teamsters.  Although  they 
form  only  an  eightieth  of  the  army  of  bread-win- 
ners, one  out  of  twelve  iron-workers,  one  out  of 
fourteen  cabinet-makers,  one  out  of  twenty- 
one  boatmen  and  sailors,  and  one  out  of  twenty- 
five  tailors  is  a  Swede.  The  Swedish  aristo- 
cratic view  of  callings  is  perhaps  responsible 
for  the  fact  that  the  immigrants'  sons  are  three 
times  as  successful  in  getting  "white-handed" 
jobs  as  the  immigrants,  and  are  much  keener  for 
such  work  than  the  sons  of  our  Norwegians. 

A  like  difference  is  visible  in  the  choices  of  the 
daughters.  Between  the  first  generation  and  the 
second  the  proportion  in  the  ladylike"  jobs  in- 
creases from  3  per  cent,  to  13.5  per  cent, 
among  the  Swedes;  from  4.2  per  cent,  to  9.8  per 
cent,  among  the  Norwegians.  While  the  propor- 
tion of  servants  and  waitresses  falls  from  61.5 
per  cent,  to  44.5  per  cent,  among  the  Swedes,  it 
actually  rises  from  46  per  cent,  to  48  per  cent, 
among  the  Norwegians.  Among  the  former 
there  is  a  more  eager  flight  from  kitchen  to  fac- 
tory. On  the  other  hand,  the  affinity  of  a  demo- 
cratic people  for  education  reveals  itself  in  the 
fact  that  in  both  generations  the  Norwegian 
women  are  decidedly  more  likely  to  be  teachers 
than  the  Swedish  women. 

ASSIMILATIOlir 

It  may  be  true  that  * '  every  Sunday  Norwegian 
is  preached  in  more  churches  in  America  than  in 


76     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Norway,"  still,  no  immigrants  of  foreign  speech 
assimilate  so  quickly  as  the  Scandinavians. 
They  never  pullulate  in  slums  or  stagnate  in  solid 
rural  settlements.  Of  10,200  families  that  have 
been  studied  in  seven  of  our  great  cities,  it  was 
found  that  the  148  Swedish  families  had  the  most 
dwellings  of  five  and  six  rooms,  the  largest  in- 
comes, the  best  housekeeping,  the  best  command 
of  English,  and  the  highest  proportion  of  voters 
among  the  men.  The  Scandinavians  have  not 
braced  themselves  against  assimilation,  as  have 
the  Germans,  with  their  Deutschtwn.  Not  being 
beer-bibbers,  and  warned  by  their  desperate  home 
struggle,  they  will  not  stand  with  the  Teutons 
for  ''personal  liberty"  on  the  question  of  drink. 
The  anti-liquor  sentiment  is  very  strong  among 
them,  and  in  the  Minnesota  legislature  nearly  all 
the  support  for  county  option  is  Scandinavian. 
Politically,  the  Norwegians  are  more  active 
than  the  Swedes,  and  they  have  been  insur- 
gent ever  since  they  formed  in  the  Northwest 
the  backbone  of  so  American  a  movement  as  Pop- 
ulism. 

Among  the  Scandinavians  the  spirit  of  self- 
improvement  is  very  strong.  No  other  foreign- 
born  people  respond  so  eagerly  to  night-school 
opportunities.  Farmers'  institutes  command 
better  attendance  and  attention  where  they 
abound  than  in  straight-American  neighborhoods. 
On  a  holiday  celebration  the  address  attracts 
more  Scandinavians,  the  ball-game  or  the  fire- 
works, more  natives.    As  patient  listeners,  they 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  79 

match  our  Puritan  forefathers.  No  other  people 
take  more  pride  in  giving  their  children  a  chance. 
In  the  words  of  a  Minnesota  schoolman,  "They 
are  the  best  people  in  the  State  to  appreciate  ed- 
ucation and  to  want  it  improved."  Unlike  the 
Germans,  they  have  left  no  mark  on  American 
culture.  Our  ideas  and  institutions  have  not 
been  changed  by  their  coming.  What  they  have 
done  is  to  quicken  our  interest  in  the  literature  of 
the  North,  and  to  win  for  it  academic  recognition. 
A  department  of  Scandinavian  is  found  not  only 
in  Harvard  and  Yale,  but  also  in  a  dozen  univer- 
sities all  the  way  from  Chicago  to  Seattle.  Even 
the  high  schools  in  Minneapolis  and  elsewhere 
find  place  for  Scandinavian. 

REACTION  TO  AMEBICA 

The  commonplace  Knud  or  Swen  brings  us  a 
mind  pinched  by  the  petty  parochialism  of  little 
countries  on  the  world's  byways.  Coming  from 
some  valley-closet  in  a  mountainous  coun- 
try, only  three  per  cent,  of  which  is  fit  for  the 
plow,  the  Norse  immigrant  is  here  spiritually  en- 
larged, like  the  native  of  a  box-canon  let  out  into 
a  plain,  or  the  cove-dweller  who  comes  to  live  by 
the  open  sea.  In  a  log  hut  by  a  lonely  fjord  in 
Trondhjem,  or  on  a  dreary  moor  in  Finmark,  the 
story  of  a  Norse  peasant  lad  rising  to  be  gover- 
nor or  senator  in  this  country  thrills  as  did,  near 
a  thousand  years  ago,  the  romantic  tale  of  some 
Varangian  back  from  service  in  the  emperor's 
guard  at  Constantinople. 


80     THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


In  the  home-land,  a  distinguished  Norwegian- 
American,  Dr.  Wergeland,  finds : 

Such  an  oppressive  spiritual  atmosphere  of  narrow- 
minded  intolerance,  of  unloving  readiness  to  raise  tea- 
cup storms,  of  insolence,  private  and  political,  of  clerical 
and  sesthetic  arrogance,  that  the  Norseman,  though 
scarcely  knowing  why,  longs  to  get  away  from  it  all  and 
to  breathe  a  fresher,  sweeter  air.  No  wonder  the  people 
emigrate.  There  is  a  peculiar  hardness  and  inflexibility 
in  the  Norseman's  nature,  and  the  mild  virtues  of  for- 
bearance grow  but  sparsely  in  his  surroundings.  This 
is  perhaps  the  reason  why  the  Norse  immigrant  brings 
to  his  new  homestead  for  the  first  four  or  five  years 
nothing  but  an  open  mouth  and  a  silent  tongue — speech- 
less astonishment.  And  this  is  the  reason  that  to  come 
back  to  Norway,  after  spending  some  years  abroad,  is 
so  often  like  coming  from  open  fields  into  narrow  alleys. 

In  this  strain  writes  a  North  Dakota  pioneer: 

What  of  change  the  new-comer  notices  in  us  Ameri- 
can Norsemen  is  good  manners;  the  respect  shown  to 
women;  the  small  class  distinctions  between  rich  and 
poor,  high  and  low;  and,  finally,  the  quickness  and 
practical  insight  into  work  and  business. 

Another  pioneer,  after  revisiting  Norway, 
writes : 

I  was  often  surprised  to  find  that  persons  who  had 
never  seen  me  before  took  me  at  once  for  an  American. 
It  seems  that  even  the  expression  of  one's  face  is  greatly 
changed  here.  During  this  visit  I  discovered  that  my 
mode  of  thinking  and  my  spiritual  life  had  changed 
so  much  during  my  thirteen  years  in  America  that  I 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  81 


did  not  feel  quite  at  home  with  my  childhood  friends. 
.  .  .  The  Norwegian  who  has  lived  a  while  in  America 
is  more  civilized  than  if  he  had  not  been  here.  He  has 
seen  more,  experienced  more,  thought  more,  and  all  this 
has  opened  his  eyes  and  broadened  his  view.  He  is 
more  wide-awake,  lives  a  richer  life,  and  is  in  a  closer 
correspondence  with  his  surroundings.  His  sympathies 
are  widened,  and  he  takes  more  interest  in  what  is  going 
on  in  the  world. 

CONTBASTS  AMONG  SCANDINAVIANS 

It  will  not  do  to  shuffle  all  our  Scandinavians 
into  one  deck.  The  Danes  are  courteous  and 
pleasure-loving,  though  moody,  and  they  run  to 
moderation  in  virtues  as  in  vices.  The  Swedes 
bear  the  impress  of  a  society  that  has  long  known 
aristocracy,  refinement,  and  industrialism.  They 
are  more  polished  in  manner  than  the  Norwegi- 
ans, although  the  humble  betray  a  servility  which 
grates  upon  Americans.  Many  show  a  sociabil- 
ity and  a  love  of  pleasure  worthy  of  **the  French 
of  the  North."  They  bring,  too,  a  love  of  let- 
ters, and  I  am  told  that  most  of  the  servant-girls 
write  verse.  The  editor  of  a  Swedish  weekly 
receives  very  well  written  poems  and  contribu- 
tions from  his  readers.  Learning  stands  high 
with  the  Swedes,  and  since  John  Ericsson  they 
have  sent  us  many  fine  technical  men.  Only 
lately  their  great  chemist  Arrhenius  hazarded 
the  prediction  that,  owing  to  the  tendency  of 
American  men  of  ability  to  go  into  business,  our 
university  chairs  will  some  day  be  filled  with 
scholars  of  German  and  Scandinavian  blood. 


82     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


The  Swede  is  more  melancholy  than  the  Norse- 
man, and  his  letters  to  friends  in  the  old  country 
are  full  of  the  expression  of  feeling.  He  has  the 
temperament  for  pietism,  which  has  always  been 
marked  among  the  Swedish-Americans  because 
they  have  been  dissenters  rather  than  adherents 
of  the  state  church.  Formerly  the  Swedes  came 
from  the  country,  and  were  conservative;  but  of 
late  they  have  been  coming  from  the  cities,  and 
are  of  a  radical  and  even  socialistic  spirit. 

The  Norwegian  bears  the  stamp  of  a  more 
primitive  life.  Squeezed  into  the  few  roods  be- 
twixt mountains  and  fjord,  he  has  eked  out  the 
scanty  yield  of  his  farm  by  grazing  the  high  gla- 
cier-fed meadows  and  gleaning  the  spoil  of  the 
sea.  The  need  which  ten  centuries  ago  drove 
the  Vikings  to  harry  Europe,  to-day  forces  their 
descendants  into  all  the  navies  of  the  world. 
Granite  and  frost  have  made  the  Norse  immi- 
grant rough-mannered,  reserved,  and  undemon- 
strative, cautious  in  speech,  austere  in  church 
life,  and  little  given  to  recreation.  German 
Gemuthlichkeit  is  not  in  him,  nor  has  he  the  Irish- 
man's sociability.  Often  he  is  as  taciturn  as  an 
Indian,  and  the  lonely  farm-houses  on  the  prairie, 
where  not  a  needless  word  is  uttered  the  livelong 
day,  contribute  many  young  people  to  the  city 
maelstrom. 

The  Norwegian  immigrant  has  the  high  spirit 
of  a  people  that  has  never  known  the  steam- 
roller of  feudalism,  of  peasants  who  held  their 
farms  by  allodial  tenure,  and  could  order  the 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  83 


king  himself  off  their  land.  He  has  more  pride 
of  nationality  than  the  Swede,  gets  into  our  poli- 
tics sooner,  and  is  more  aggressive  in  improving 
his  opportunities.  He  has  the  name  of  being 
truer  to  his  friends  and  to  his  word.  Firms  de- 
clare that  they  lose  less  by  his  bad  debts.  **The 
Swede,"  remarks  an  educator,  ''will  show  the 
white  feather  and  desert  you  in  a  pinch;  but  not 
the  Norwegian."  A  mine  "boss"  thinks  he  can 
distinguish  Scandinavians  by  type.  '*The 
smooth,  white-haired  fellows,"  he  says,  ''have  a 
yellow  streak  in  them;  but  the  dark,  or  sandy- 
haired  fellows,  with  a  rough  skin  and  rugged 
features,  are  reliable."  In  the  Northwest,  the 
nickname  "Norsky"  is  more  apt  to  be  used  in  a 
good-natured  way  than  the  term  "Swede." 

INTELLECTUAL  ABILITY 

Since  our  editors  and  public  men  tender  each 
nationality  of  immigrants — as  soon  as  they  have 
money  and  votes — nothing  but  lollipops  of  com- 
pliment, one  is  loth  to  proffer  the  pungent  olive 
of  truth.  But  it  is  a  fact  that  many  who  have  to 
do  with  the  Americans  of  Scandinavian  parent- 
age question  whether  marked  ability  so  often 
presents  itself  among  them  as  among  certain 
other  strains.  The  weight  of  testimony  indicates 
that  resourcefulness  and  intellectual  initiative 
are  rarer  among  them  than  among  those  of  Ger- 
man descent.  Teachers  find  their  children 
"rather  slow,"  although  few  fall  behind.  Scan- 
dinavian students  do  well,  but  they  are  "plod- 


84     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


ders."  They  beat  the  Irish  in  close  application, 
but  less  often  are  they  called  "brilliant." 

Of  19,000  Americans  recognized  in  *'Who 's 
Who  in  America,"  332  were  born  in  Germany, 
151  in  Ireland,  68  in  France,  54  in  Sweden,  42  in 
Russia,  41  in  the  Netherlands,  34  in  Switzerland, 
33  in  Austria,  30  in  Norway,  28  in  Italy,  and  14 
in  Denmark.  The  Scandinavians  have  reached 
prominence  far  less  often  than  the  French,  Dutch, 
and  Swiss  Americans,  and  not  so  often  even  as 
the  Germans.  To  the  first  thousand  men  of  sci- 
ence in  America,  our  Swedish  fellow-citizens  con- 
tribute at  the  rate  of  5.2  per  million  as  against 
1.8  for  the  Irish,  7.1  for  the  Germans,  7.4  for 
those  born  in  Russia,  and  10.4  for  those  bom  in 
Austria-Hungary. 

It  is  a  fair  question,  then,  whether  our  Scandina- 
vians represent  the  flower  of  their  people  as  well 
as  the  root  and  stalk.  No  doubt  in  venturesome- 
ness  they  surpass  those  in  like  circumstances  who 
stayed  at  home.  No  doubt  they  brought  in  full 
measure  the  forceful  character  of  the  race;  but, 
thanks  to  our  bland,  syrupy  way  of  appraising 
the  naturalized  foreign-born,  the  question  of 
comparative  brain  power  never  comes  up. 

Now,  oppression  or  persecution  had  very  little 
to  do  with  the  outflow  from  Scandinavia.  The 
immigrants  came  for  a  better  living,  for,  in  the 
main,  they  have  been  servants  and  common  la- 
borers, with  a  sprinkling  of  small  farmers  and  a 
fair  contingent  of  craftsmen.  We  have  had  very 
few  representatives  of  the  classes  enjoying  access 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  85 


to  higher  education,  business,  the  professions, 
and  the  pubhc  service.  Having  fair  prospects  at 
home,  the  more  capable  families  very  likely  con- 
tributed fewer  emigrants  than  the  rest.  A  pro- 
fessor of  Swedish  parentage  tells  me  that  he  has 
noticed  that  the  successful  Swedes  he  meets  trav- 
eling in  this  country  are  wholly  different  in  physi- 
ognomy from  the  immigrants.  The  faces  here 
strike  him  as  duller  and  less  regular  than  the 
faces  of  people  in  Sweden.  Other  Swedish- 
Americans,  however,  contend  that  formerly  caste 
barriers  in  the  fatherland  so  blocked  the  rise  of 
gifted  commoners  that  the  immigrant  stream  is 
as  rich  in  natural  ability  as  is  the  Swedish  peo- 
ple at  home.  Eugged  Norway  has  less  to  hold  at 
home  the  more  capable  stocks ;  but  still  one  meets 
with  candid  Norwegian- Americans  who  think  our 
million  of  Norse  blood  represent  the  brawn  rather 
than  the  brain  of  their  folk. 

MENTAL  AND  PRACTICAL  TRAITS 

Norse  mythology  is  to  Celtic  mythology  what 
a  Yukon  forest  is  to  an  Orinoco  jungle.  In 
the  Sagas  of  Iceland  the  fancy  never  runs  riot  as 
it  does  in  the  legends  of  Connemara  or  Brittany. 
It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  our  Scandinavi- 
ans are  not  distinguished  for  visual  imagination. 
Professors  notice  that  the  lads  of  this  breed  are 
slow  to  grasp  the  principle  of  the  machinery 
about  the  college  of  agriculture,  and  need  a  dia- 
gram to  supplement  oral  description  of  a  venti- 
lating system.    To  them  even  a  drawing  is  a 


86     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


maze  of  lines  rather  than  a  picture.  A  physical 
director  working  among  Scandinavians  labored 
in  vain  to  get  his  trustees  to  imagine  from  the 
blue  prints  how  the  new  gymnasium  would  look. 
Not  until  the  scaffolding  was  down  were  his  gym- 
nasts satisfied  that  there  would  be  "room  to  do 
the  giant  swing."  His  boy  scouts  had  no  faith  in 
a  selected  camp-site  till  the  brush  was  actually 
cleared  from  it.    They  lacked  "the  mind's  eye." 

"It  is  not  enough,"  remarks  a  settlement  head, 
"to  show  rich  Nils  or  Lars  'how  the  other  half 
lives ' ;  you 've  got  to  clinch  your  appeal  by  show- 
ing him  how  the  other  half  ought  to  live."  Says 
a  social  worker,  "I  picture  to  the  poor  Slovak  an 
eight-room,  steam-heated  house  as  a  goal,  and  he 
will  work  for  it;  but  the  poor  Swede  can't  im- 
agine such  a  house  as  his  own,  so  I  have  to  talk  to 
him  of  the  four-room  house  he  will  one  day  pos- 
sess." 

It  is  said  that,  as  merchant,  the  Scandinavian 
puts  little  visualizing  into  his  advertisements, 
and  is  slow  to  catch  the  vision  of  a  community 
prosperity  through  team-work.  As  business 
man,  he  is  a  "stand-patter,"  able  to  run  a  going 
concern,  but  without  the  American's  power  to 
anticipate  developments  and  to  plant  a  business 
where  none  exists.  As  farmer,  he  is  not  so  far- 
sighted  as  the  German.  He  will  burn  off  the 
growth  on  his  cut-over  land  till  the  humus  has 
been  consumed,  or  wear  out  his  fields  with  some 
profitable  but  exhausting  crop,  like  tobacco.  As 
investor,  he  is  the  opposite  of  the  imaginative. 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  89 


speculative  American,  for  large,  remote  profits 
do  not  appeal  to  him.  As  labor  leader,  he  lacks 
vision  and  idealism.  On  the  stump  he  does  not 
address  the  imagination  as  does  the  Hibernian 
spellbinder.  As  advocate,  he  makes  a  hard- 
headed  plea  without  sentiment,  and  as  after-din- 
ner speaker  he  lacks  in  wit  and  fancy. 

So  little  sociable  are  the  Scandinavians  that  it 
is  said  "ice-water  runs  in  their  veins."  Even 
liquor  will  not  start  the  current  of  fraternal  feel- 
ing. They  care  little  for  the  social  side  of  their 
labor-unions,  and  neglect  the  regular  meetings. 
They  do  not  warm  up  to  an  employer  who  treats 
them  ** right."  Without  the  happy  art  of  mixing 
and  fraternizing,  these  sons  of  the  North  do  not 
shine  as  bar-tenders,  salesmen,  canvassers,  com- 
mercial travelers,  or  life-insurance  solicitors.  As 
street-car  conductors  in  Minneapolis  they  are 
said  to  be  less  helpful  and  polite  than  the  Ameri- 
can or  the  Irish  conductors  of  St.  Paul.  Teach- 
ers of  this  blood  do  not  easily  attach  their  pupils 
to  them;  while  the  children,  instead  of  being  in- 
spired by  an  audience,  as  are  the  Irish,  become 
tongue-tied.  Often  one  hears  a  teacher  lament, 
**I  can't  get  anything  out  of  them." 

There  is  sweetness  in  the  Scandinavian  nature, 
but  you  reach  it  deep  down  past  flint.  The  late 
Governor  Johnson  of  Minnesota  drew  people  be- 
cause he  had  imagination  and  tenderness — traits 
none  too  common  among  his  people.  They  are 
undemonstrative  in  the  family,  and  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  their  youth  on  the  farms  are  rest- 


90     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


less  from  heart-hunger.  Besides,  there  is  dearth 
of  recreation.  The  Norwegian  has  his  violin,  but 
the  Swedish  folk-dances  we  hear  so  much  about 
were  not  brought  in  by  the  immigrants.  They 
lack  the  German  Mdnnerchor,  Turnverein,  and 
Schuetzenfest.  It  is  unusual  to  find  them  organ- 
izing athletic  sports.  Their  social  gatherings 
center  in  the  church,  which  of  course  acts  as  a 
damper  on  the  spirits  of  the  young.  They  love 
fun,  to  be  sure,  but  have  not  the  knack  of  making 
it.  Shut  up  within  themselves,  hard  to  reach, 
slow  to  kindle,  and  dominated  by  an  austere  hell- 
fire  theology,  they  are  too  often  the  prey  of  som- 
ber moods  and  victims  of  suicide  and  insanity. 

An  experienced  social  worker  finds  selfishness 
the  besetting  sin  of  the  Scandinavians  he  deals 
with.  If  a  settlement  class  get  a  room  or  a 
camp,  they  object  to  any  others  using  it.  In  any 
undertaking  they  have  in  cormnon  with  other  na- 
tionalities they  try  to  get  the  best  for  themselves. 
They  withhold  aid  from  the  distressed  of  another 
nationality,  while  the  Irish  will  respond  gener- 
ously to  the  same  appeal.  A  labor  leader  notices 
that  the  Scandinavian  working-men  are  **hard 
givers."  A  kindergartener  who  sent  out  Christ- 
mas gifts  to  twenty  poor  Scandinavian  families 
received  thanks  from  only  one.  A  society  gave 
relief  to  260  such  families  during  the  winter,  and 
the  number  who  expressed  gratitude  could  be 
counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  One  clergy- 
man declared  that  his  people  are  not  generous  in 
supporting  their  own  charities. 


THE  SCANDINAVIANS  91 


On  the  other  hand,  an  observer  remarks: 
**For  a  suffering  person,  circulate  your  subscrip- 
tion paper  among  the  Irish;  for  a  good  cause,  cir- 
culate it  among  the  Scandinavians."  In  other 
words,  the  goodness  of  these  people  is  from  the 
head  rather  than  from  the  heart.  *'If  I  can  get 
him  to  see  it  as  his  duty,"  testifies  a  charity 
worker,  **the  Scandinavian  will  go  almost  any 
length."  Credit  men  rank  them  with  the  Ger- 
mans as  the  surest  pay.  Insurance  agents  say  no 
other  people  are  so  faithful  in  paying  their  pre- 
miums "on  the  nail."  If  there  is  a  suspicious 
fire  in  a  store,  the  owner's  name  never  ends  in 
*'son."  In  Minnesota  there  are  more  cooper- 
ative stores,  creameries,  and  elevators  in  the 
Scandinavian  communities  than  in  the  American. 

The  Norwegians  have  been  virile  politically, 
and  their  politics  has  reflected  moral  ideas.  They 
look  upon  public  office  as  a  trust,  not  a  means  of 
livelihood.  In  the  days  of  Populism  they  were 
more  open-minded  than  the  Americans.  In 
Wisconsin  they  have  furnished  a  stanch  support 
for  the  constructive  policies  which  have  drawn 
upon  that  State  national  attention.  In  the  crit- 
ical roll-calls  in  the  Minnesota  legislature  all  but 
one  or  two  of  the  Scandinavian  members  are 
found  on  the  "right  side."  The  "interests" 
have  the  Germans, — brewing  being  an  "inter- 
est,"— the  Irish,  and  many  Americans. 

The  truth  is,  their  slow  reaction  gives  these 
people  the  right  psychology  for  self-government. 
In  politics  they  are  "good  losers."    They  are 


92     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


not  to  be  stampeded  by  fiery  rhetoric  or  mass 
hysteria.  They  have  the  self-control  to  right 
abuses  by  orderly  constitutional  methods.  In  the 
Chicago  anarchist  trials  the  defense  was  careful 
to  keep  Scandinavians  out  of  the  jury-box. 
Among  the  Scandinavian  peoples  riots,  barri- 
cades, and  street  turbulence  have  played  no  part 
in  the  redress  of  political  grievances.  Ideas  of 
right  lie  at  the  base  of  their  social  order,  while 
habit  and  sentiment  count  for  less  than  they  do 
among  South  Europeans.  So,  while  our  Scan- 
dinavian strain  may  lack  the  qualities  for  politi- 
cal leadership,  it  provides  an  excellent,  cool- 
blooded,  self-controlled  citizenship  for  the  sup- 
port of  representative  government. 

1841  -45  I  4900 
1846-50  I  9500 
1831-55  H  I5900 
I8S&-60  I  9200 
I86I-6S  ■  16700 
1 866-70 

1871-75  ■  ll'SfeOO  ^ 

1676-80  CHHIBHHI^l   HARD  TIMES  IN  U.S. 
1881-85  ■  35230oW   InVroPUCTION  OF  MACHINE  POWER 


1686-90  ■  304200 M  ON  SCAN  D|  N AVIAN  ^^^^^^^^^B 
1891-95  ■  244feOOM  rARNTs"^^^^— ^^^BB 
l89<rl900^^700^BI^^HB    HARD  TIMES  IN  U.S. 
1901-05  ■  Z^lfeOoM   hi YPftO- ELECTRIC  INDUSTRIES  ■ 
1906-10  M  il5700'Mn^^CANDINAviATMB 

Immigration  from  Demnark,  Norway,  and  Sweden,  1841-1910 


CHAPTEB  V 


THE  ITALIANS 

THE  iimnigration  from  Italy  has  shot  up  like 
Jonah's  gourd.  During  the  last  decade  a 
fourth  of  our  immigrants  have  been  Italians,  and 
from  being  a  twentieth  part  of  our  foreign-born, 
they  have  risen  to  be  a  tenth.  This  freshet  is  not 
born  of  religious  or  political  oppression,  for  Italy 
enjoys  a  government  on  modern  lines,  created  by 
the  efforts  of  patriots  like  Mazzini,  Cavour,  and 
Garibaldi.  The  impulse  that  every  year  prompts 
from  a  quarter  to  a  half  of  a  million  Italians  to 
wander  oversea  is  purely  economic.  Ignorance 
and  the  subjection  of  women  cause  blind  multipli- 
cation, with  the  result  that  the  Italians  are  wrest- 
ing their  food  from  narrower  plots  than  any  other 
European  people.  A  population  approximating 
that  of  all  our  Atlantic  States  is  trying  to  live 
from  a  space  little  greater  than  the  combined 
areas  of  New  York  and  Georgia.  Although 
Argentina  seconds  the  United  States  in  ab- 
sorbing the  overflow,  still,  Italy's  population  con- 
tinually swells,  her  birth-rate  is  not  sinking  so 
rapidly  as  her  death-rate,  and  one  sees  no  reason 
why  the  Italian  dusk  should  not  in  time  quench 
what  of  the  Celto-Teutonic  flush  lingers  in  the 
cheek  of  the  native  American. 

95 


96     THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


DISTRIBUTION  THROUGHOUT  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Of  our  one  and  one-third  million  of  Italians, 
the  Northeast  down  to  Washington  holds  about 
three-fourths,  while  south  and  southwest  of  the 
Capitol  there  are  only  three  and  a  half  per  cent. 
The  middle  West  has  sixteen  per  cent.,  and  the 
quota  of  the  Far  West  is  seven  and  a  half  per  cent. 
For  the  most  part,  they  are  greatly  concentrated 
in  cities.  Roughly  speaking,  five-sixths  of  the 
Italians  in  Delaware  are  in  Wilmington ;  in  Mary- 
land, three-sevenths  are  in  Baltimore ;  in  Illinois, 
three-eights  are  in  Chicago;  in  Nebraska,  two- 
thirds  are  in  Omaha ;  in  Missouri,  three-fifths  are 
in  St.  Louis ;  in  Oregon,  one-half  are  in  Portland ; 
in  Pennsylvania,  one-half  are  in  Philadelphia;  in 
Louisiana,  two-fifths  are  in  New  Orleans;  in 
Michigan,  a  third  are  in  Detroit;  and  in  Ohio,  a 
quarter  are  in  Cleveland.  In  New  York  city  are 
massed  a  third  of  a  million  of  Italians,  one-fourth 
of  all  in  the  country.  Although  a  slow  percola- 
tion into  the  rural  districts  is  going  on,  this  cur- 
rent distributes  immigrants  very  differently  from 
the  older  streams  that  debouched  on  the  advanc- 
ing frontier. 

SOCIAL  CHARACTERISTICS 

Migratory  job-hunters  rather  than  home- 
seekers,  the  Italians  are  loath  to  encumber  them- 
selves with  their  women.  The  women  are  only  a 
little  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  whole,  nor  do  they 
come  here  more  freely  as  time  goes  on.    A  natu- 


THE  ITALIANS 


97 


ral  consequence  of  leaving  families  behind  is  a 
huge  return  current  to  Italy,  amounting  to  a  third 
of  the  arrivals  from  Italy. 

More  than  half  of  our  British  immigrants  are 
skilled.  Of  the  Italian  arrivals,  one  out  of  eight 
is  skilled,  one  out  of  four  is  a  farm-laborer,  one 
out  of  three  is  a  common  laborer,  and  one  in  two 
hundred  and  fifty  has  a  profession.  In  a  word, 
two-thirds  are  of  rural  origin.  The  illiteracy  of 
the  Italian  immigrants  more  than  fourteen  years 
of  age  is  forty-seven  per  cent. ;  so  that  of  the  two 
million  illiterates  admitted  to  this  country 
1899-1909,  nearly  one-half  hailed  from  Italy. 

NOKTH  ITAIilANS  AND  SOUTH  ITALIANS 

The  fact  that  the  emigrants  from  the  north  of 
Italy  wander  chiefly  to  South  America,  where  in- 
dustrially they  dominate,  while  the  emigrants 
from  central  and  southern  Italy  come  to  this 
country,  where  they  are  dominated,  makes  it  im- 
portant to  remember  that  in  race  advancement 
the  North  Italians  differ  from  the  rest  of  their 
fellow-countrymen.  In  the  veins  of  the  broad- 
head  people  of  Piedmont,  Lombardy,  and  Venetia 
runs  much  Northern  blood — Celtic,  Gothic,  Lom- 
bard, and  German.  The  other  Italians  are  of  the 
long-head,  dark,  Mediterranean  race,  with  no 
small  infusion  of  Greek,  Saracen,  and  African 
blood  in  the  Calabrians  and  Sicilians.  Barely  is 
there  so  wide  an  ethnic  gulf  between  the  geo- 
graphical extremes  of  a  nation  as  there  is  between 
Milan  and  Palermo. 


98     THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


The  Italians  themselves  have  set  forth  these 
contrasts  in  the  sharpest  relief.  In  an  elaborate 
treatise,  Professor  Niceforo  shows  that  blue  eyes 
and  fair  hair  occur  twice  as  often  among  the 
North  Italians  as  among  the  people  south  of 
Rome ;  that  their  understatured  are  eight  per  cent, 
of  the  whole  as  against  twenty  per  cent,  for  the 
South  Italians;  and  that  they  show  a  greater 
frequency  of  high  foreheads  and  a  smaller  fre- 
quency of  low  brows.  They  have  a  third  of  the 
illiteracy  of  the  South,  twice  the  school  attend- 
ance, thrice  the  number  of  higher  students;  and 
while  a  clear  third  of  the  southern  students  fail 
in  their  examinations,  less  than  a  quarter  of  the 
northerners  fail.  Northern  Italy  is  twice  as  well 
off  in  teachers  and  libraries,  five  times  as  pro- 
ductive in  book  publishing,  has  twice  as  many 
voters  to  the  hundred  inhabitants,  and  buys  half 
as  many  lottery-tickets  as  the  South.  The  aston- 
ishing dearth  of  literary  and  artistic  production 
in  the  South  ought  to  confound  those  optimists 
who,  identifying  ''Italian"  with  "Venetian"  and 

Tuscan,"  anticipate  that  the  Italian  infusion 
will  one  day  make  the  American  stock  bloom  with 
poets  and  painters.  The  figures  of  Niceforo  show 
that  the  provinces  that  contribute  most  to  our  im- 
migration have  been  utterly  sterile  in  creators  of 
beauty. 

In  nothing  are  the  two  peoples  so  unlike  as  in 
their  crimes.  While  northern  Italy  leads  in 
fraud  and  chicane,  southern  Italy  reveals  a  rank 
growth  of  the  ferocious  crimes  that  go  with  a 


THE  ITALIANS 


101 


primitive  stage  of  civilization.  The  contrast  is 
between  force  and  fraud,  violence  and  cunning. 
The  South  produces  five  times  as  much  homicide 
as  the  North,  four  times  as  much  brigandage,  three 
times  as  many  assaults,  and  five  times  as  many 
seizures  or  destructions  of  property.  On  the 
whole,  it  has  from  three  to  four  times  the  violence 
of  the  North,  while  its  obscene  crimes,  which  con- 
stitute an  index  of  sensuality,  are  thrice  as  nu- 
merous. As  for  Sicilians,  they  are  scourged  by 
seven  times  the  homicide,  four  times  the  brigand- 
age, and  four  times  the  obscene  crime  suffered 
by  an  equal  number  of  North  Italians. 

Although  less  advanced,  the  Italians  from  the 
valley  of  the  Po  are  racially  akin  to  the  Swiss  and 
the  South  Grermans.  As  immigrants,  their  su- 
periority to  other  Italians  is  generally  recog- 
nized. I  have  yet  to  meet  an  observer  who  does 
not  rate  the  North  Italian  among  us  as  more  in- 
telligent, reliable,  and  progressive  than  the 
South  Italian.  We  know  from  statistics  that 
he  is  less  turbulent,  less  criminal,  less  transient; 
he  earns  more,  rises  higher,  and  acquires  citizen- 
ship sooner.  Yet  only  a  fifth  of  our  Italians  are 
from  the  North.  It  is  the  backward  and  be- 
nighted provinces  from  Naples  to  Sicily  that  send 
us  the  flood  of  gross  little  aliens"  who  gave 
Henry  James,  on  revisiting  Boston,  the  melan- 
choly vision  "  of  a  huge  applied  sponge — a  sponge 
saturated  with  the  foreign  mixture  and  passed 
over  almost  everything  I  remembered  and  might 
still  have  recovered." 


102    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


VAEIETY  OF  OCCUPATIONS 

Being  new-comers,  the  Italians  are  doing  the 
heavy,  unskilled  work  which  was  once  the  preroga- 
tive of  the  Irish.  The  shovel  is  now  as  firmly  as- 
sociated in  our  minds  with  'Tonio  as  formerly  with 
Barney.  The  North  Italians  go  much  into 
mine  and  quarry  and  silk-mill,  but  the  others  stick 
close  to  railroad,  street,  and  construction  work. 
Of  our  railroads  it  has  been  said  that  Italians 
build  them,  Irish  run  them,  and  Jews  own  them. ' ' 
Nearer  to  the  truth,  perhaps,  is  the  New  York  mot, 
''Houses  nowadays  are  built  by  Italians,  owned 
by  Jews,  and  paid  for  by  Irish  tenants."  Being 
small  and  vegetarian,  the  Italians  are  not  pre- 
ferred in  earthwork  for  their  physical  strength, 
but  because  of  their  endurance  of  heat,  cold,  wet, 
and  muck.  As  one  contractor  puts  it,  * '  they  can 
stand  the  gaff." 

Although  the  South  Italians  are  numerous 
in  the  manufacture  of  boots  and  shoes,  cigars, 
glass,  woolen  goods,  and  clothing,  some  employers 
refuse  the  males  for  ''inside  work"  because  they 
have  the  reputation  of  being  turbulent.  Their 
noteworthy  absence  from  the  rolling-mills  is  at- 
tributed to  the  fact  that  they  lack  the  nervous 
stability  needed  for  seizing  a  white-hot  piece  of 
iron  with  a  pair  of  tongs.  The  phlegmatic  Slav 
stands  up  to  such  work. 

In  the  trades,  the  Italians  crop  up  numerously 
as  bakers,  barbers,  cobblers,  confectioners,  tailors, 
street  musicians,  scissors-grinders  and  marble- 


THE  ITALIANS 


103 


cutters.  A  great  number  become  hucksters  and 
peddlers  of  such  characteristic  wares  as  fruits  and 
plaster  casts.  It  is  the  Italian  from  the  North, 
especially  the  Genoese,  who  brings  native  com- 
mercial capacity  and  becomes  a  wholesale  or  com- 
mission merchant  in  fruits  and  vegetables,  while 
the  Neapolitan  is  still  fussing  with  his  banana- 
stand.  Thanks  to  their  race  genius,  the  Italian 
musicians  and  teachers  of  music  among  us  bid 
fair  to  break  the  musical  monopoly  of  the  German- 
Americans. 

In  one  province  of  southern  Italy  not  a  plow 
exists,  and  the  women  wield  the  hand  implements 
beside  the  men.  It  is  not  strange  that  immigrants 
with  such  experience  do  well  here  in  truck-farm- 
ing and  market-gardening.  Those  who  engage  in 
real  agriculture  settle  chiefly  in  colonies,  for  the 
voluble,  gregarious  Italians  cannot  endure  the 
chill  loneliness  of  the  American  homestead.  They 
follow  their  bent  for  intensive  farming,  and  would 
hardly  know  how  to  handle  more  than  fifteen  or 
twenty  acres.  Few  of  them  are  up  to  ordinary 
extensive  farming.  As  one  observer  says,  * '  They 
haven't  the  head  for  it." 

Although  Italians  are  making  a  living  on  the 
cut-over  pine-lands  of  northern  Wisconsin,  the 
rocky  hills  of  New  England,  the  sandy  barrens  of 
New  Jersey,  and  the  muck  soil  of  western  New 
York,  their  love  of  sunshine  is  not  dead.  The 
cane,  cotton,  and  tobacco  fields  of  the  South  at- 
tract them.  More  than  half  of  the  Italians  in 
Louisiana  are  on  the  plantations.    Half  of  the 


104    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


sixty  thousand  in  California  are  in  vineyard  and 
orchard.  The  famed  Italian-Swiss  colony  at 
Asti  employs  a  thousand  men  to  help  it  make  wine 
under  a  cielo  sereno  like  that  of  Italy.  Many  a 
fisherman  who  has  cast  his  net  in  the  Gulf  of 
Genoa  now  strains  the  waters  of  San  Francisco 
Bay. 

There  are  two-score  rural  colonies  of  Italians  in 
the  South,  and  the  settlements  at  Bryan,  Texas, 
and  Sunnyside  and  Tontitown,  Arkansas,  are  well 
known.  Italians  have  been  welcomed  to  the  South 
by  planters  dissatisfied  with  negro  labor  or  de- 
sirous of  deriving  a  return  from  their  raw  land. 
As  a  cotton  raiser,  the  Italian  has  excelled  the 
negro  at  every  point.  When  it  was  found,  how- 
ever, that  thrifty  Pietro  insisted  on  buying  land 
after  his  second  crop  as  tenant,  whereas  the  black 
tenant  will  go  on  forever  letting  his  superintend- 
ing white  landlord  draw  an  income  from  him,  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  planters  cooled.  Then,  too,  a 
fear  has  sprung  up  lest  the  Italians,  being  without 
the  southern  white  man's  strong  race  feeling, 
should  mix  with  the  negroes  and  create  a  hybrid. 
The  South,  therefore,  is  less  eager  for  Italian  im- 
migrants than  it  was,  and  the  legislatures  of  North 
Carolina,  South  Carolina,  and  Virginia  have  re- 
corded their  sense  of  the  undesirableness  of  this 
element. 

CHABACTEKISTIC  VICES 

The  peoples  from  the  Azores  to  Armenia  are 
well-nigh  immune  to  the  seduction  of  alcohol;  so 


THE  ITALIANS 


105 


that  if  this  be  the  test  of  desirableness,  it  will  be 
easy  to  part  the  sheep  from  the  goats.  Certain 
American  sentimentalists  go  into  raptures  over 
the  ''sobriety"  of  the  new  immigrants,  and  to  such 
we  may  as  well  concede  first  as  last  that  there 
would  be  no  liquor  problem  here  if  abstemious 
Portuguese  had  landed  at  Jamestown  instead  of 
hard-drinking  English;  if  temperate  Rumanians 
had  settled  the  colonies  instead  of  thirsty  Ger- 
mans and  Scotch-Irish;  and  if  sober,  coffee- 
drinking  Turks  had  peopled  the  West  instead  of 
bibulous  Hibernians  and  Scandinavians.  The 
proportion  of  Italian  charity  cases  due  to  drink  is 
only  a  sixth  of  that  for  foreign-born  cases,  and  a 
seventh  of  that  for  cases  among  native  Americans. 
Alcoholics  occur  among  the  Italians  in  the  charity 
hospitals  from  a  tenth  to  a  twentieth  as  often  as 
among  North  Europeans.  Still,  American  ex- 
ample and  American  strain  are  telling  on  the 
habits  of  the  Italians,  and  in  the  Italian  home 
the  bottle  of  **rock  and  rye"  is  seen  with  increas- 
ing frequency  by  the  side  of  the  bottle  of  Chianti. 

Bax3helors  in  the  pick-and-shovel  brigade  will 
have  their  diversions,  so  it  is  not  surprising  that 
the  Italians,  like  the  abstemious  Chinese,  are  ad- 
dicted to  gambling.  Games  of  chance  flourish  in 
their  saloons,  and  many  a  knife-thrust  has  come 
out  of  a  game  of  cards.  At  home  the  state  lottery 
has  whetted  the  taste  for  gambling.  In  the 
Neapolitan  the  intoxication  of  the  lottery  takes 
the  place  occupied  by  alcholic  intoxication  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon.    When  one  learns  that  on  an  aver- 


106    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


age  the  Neapolitan  risks  $3,15  a  year  in  tlie  lot- 
tery, six  times  as  much  as  the  average  Italian,  one 
does  not  wonder  that  the  immigrant  hankers  to 
put  his  money  on  something. 

VIOLENCE  IN  CRIME 

For  aU  the  great  majority  of  the  Italian  immi- 
grants are  peaceable  and  industrious,  no  other 
element  matches  them  in  propensity  for  personal 
violence.  In  homicide,  rape,  blackmail,  and  kid- 
napping they  lead  the  foreign-bom.  Says  the  Im- 
migration Commission:  "The  Italian  criminals 
are  largest  in  numbers  and  create  most  alarm  by 
the  violent  character  of  their  offenses  in  this  coun- 
try." Among  moderns,  gainful  offenses  occur 
from  three  to  seven  times  as  frequently  as  crimes 
of  violence.  The  medievalism  of  the  South 
Italians  appears  from  the  fact  that  they  commit 
more  deeds  of  personal  violence  than  gainful  of- 
fenses. 

Browning,  who  knew  the  Italians,  expresses  this 
cheerful  alacrity  in  murder  when,  in  "The  Eing 
and  the  Book,"  the  Pope  tells  of  the  four  "bright- 
eyed,  black-haired  boys"  Count  Guido  hired  for 
his  bloody  work: 

Murder  me  some  three  people,  old  and  young, 
Ye  never  heard  the  names  of — and  be  paid 
So  much.    And  the  whole  four  accede  at  once. 
Demur?    Do  cattle  bidden  march  or  halt? 

All  is  done  purely  for  the  pay — which  earned, 
And  not  forthcoming  at  the  instant,  makes 


THE  ITALIANS 


107 


Eeligion  heresy,  and  the  lord  o'  the  land 
Fit  subject  for  a  murder  in  liis  turn. 
The  patron  with  cut  throat  and  rifled  purse, 
Deposited  i'  the  roadside  ditch,  his  due, 
Naught  hinders  each  good  fellow  trudging  home 
The  heavier  by  a  piece  or  two  in  poke, 
And  so  with  new  zest  to  the  common  life, 
Mattock  and  spade,  plow-tail  and  wagon-shaft 
Till  some  such  other  piece  of  luck  betide. 

It  was  frequently  stated  to  the  members  of  the 
Immigration  Commission  in  southern  Italy  that 
crime  had  greatly  diminished  in  many  communi- 
ties because  most  of  the  criminals  had  gone  to 
America.  One  Italian  official  at  Messina  stated 
that  several  years  ago  southern  Italy  was  a  hot- 
bed of  crime,  but  that  now  very  few  criminals 
were  left.  When  asked  as  to  their  whereabouts, 
he  replied,  "Why,  they  are  all  in  the  United 
States."  From  the  Camorra,  that  vast  spider- 
web  of  thieves  and  prostitutes  by  whom  life  and 
politics  in  Naples  are  controlled,  have  come  thou- 
sands who  find  the  hard-working  Italian  immi- 
grants a  richer  field  of  exploitation  than  any  field 
open  at  home.  Still  more  harassing  is  the  Mafia, 
by  means  of  which  Sicilians  contrive  to  ignore 
police  and  courts  and  to  secure  justice  in  their 
own  way.  A  legacy  of  Spanish  domination  and 
Spanish  arrogance  is  the  sense  of  omertd,  or  man- 
liness, which  holds  it  dastardly  to  betray  to  jus- 
tice even  one's  dealiest  foe.  To  avenge  one's 
wrongs  oneself,  and  never  to  appeal  to  law,  is  a 
part  of  Sicilian  honor. 


108    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


In  an  Italian  quarter  are  men  wlio  never  work, 
yet  who  have  plenty  of  money.  '*No,"  they  say, 
"we  do  not  work.  Work  does  not  agree  with  us. 
We  have  friends  who  work  and  give  us  money. 
Why  not?"  It  is  these  parasites  who  commit 
most  of  the  crime.  Their  honest  fellow-country- 
men shrink  from  them,  yet,  if  one  of  them  is  ar- 
rested, some  make  it  a  point  of  honor  to  swear 
him  off,  while  all  scrupulously  forget  anything 
against  him.  Thanks  to  this  perverse  idea  of 
honor,"  an  Italian  murder  may  be  committed  in 
the  street  in  broad  daylight,  with  dozens  looking 
on,  yet  a  few  minutes  later  every  spectator  will 
deny  to  the  police  that  he  has  seen  anything.  This 
highbinder  contempt  for  law  is  reinforced  by  sheer 
terrorism.  It  is  said  that  often  in  our  courts  the 
sudden  wilting  of  a  promising  Italian  witness  has 
been  brought  about  by  the  secret  giving  of  the 
"death-sign,"  a  quick  passing  of  the  hand  across 
the  throat  as  if  cutting. 

The  American,  with  his  ready  resort  to  the 
vigilance  committee,  is  amazed  that  a  whole  com- 
munity should  let  itseK  thus  be  bullied  by  a  few 
miscreants  known  to  all.  Nothing  of  the  sort  has 
ever  been  tolerated  by  North  European  immi- 
grants. The  secret  lies  in  the  inaptness  of  the 
South  Italians  for  good  team  work.  Individ- 
ualistic to  the  marrow,  they  lack  the  gift  of  pulling 
together,  and  have  never  achieved  an  efficient  co- 
operating unit  larger  than  the  family. 

General  Theodore  E.  Bingham,  former  Police 
Commisisoner  of  New  York,  estimated  that  there 


THE  ITALIANS 


111 


are  in  that  city  not  less  than  3000  desperadoes 
from  southern  Italy,  "among  them  as  many  fero- 
cious and  desperate  men  as  ever  gathered  in  a 
modern  city  in  time  of  peace — medieval  criminals 
who  must  be  dealt  with  under  modern  law."  In 
1908  he  stated:  "Crimes  of  blackmailing,  blow- 
ing up  of  shops  and  houses,  and  kidnapping  of 
their  countrymen  have  become  prevalent  among 
Italian  residents  of  the  city  to  an  extent  that  can- 
not be  much  longer  tolerated. "  It  is  obvious  that 
if  our  legal  system  is  called  upon  to  cope  with  a 
great  volume  of  such  crime  for  a  long  time,  it 
will  slough  off  certain  Anglo-Saxon  features  and 
adopt  the  methods  which  alone  avail  in  Italy, 
namely,  state  police,  registry  system, '  *  special  sur- 
veillance" and  "admonition." 

ASSIMILATION  WITH  AMEKICANS 

Not  being  transients,  the  North  Italians  do 
not  resist  Americanizing  influences.  The  Gen- 
oese, for  example,  come  not  to  earn  wages,  but  to 
engage  in  business.  They  shun  the  Italian 
"quarter,"  mix  with  Americans,  and  Anglicize 
their  names.  Mariani  becomes  Merriam;  Abata 
turns  to  Abbey;  Garberino  softens  to  Gilbert; 
while  Campana  suffers  a  "sea  change"  into  Bell. 
In  the  produce-markets  they  deal  with  Americans, 
and  as  high-class  saloon-keepers  they  are  forging 
past  Michael  and  Gustaf. 

But  the  South  Italians  remain  nearly  as 
aloof  as  did  the  Cantonese  who  built  the  Central 
Pacific  Railway.    Navvies  who  leave  for  Naples 


112    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


when  the  ground  freezes,  and  return  in  April,  who 
huddle  in  a  "camp"  or  a  box-car,  or  herd  on  some 
"Dago  Flat,"  are  not  really  in  America.  In  a 
memorial  to  the  acting  mayor  of  New  York,  the 
Italian-American  Civic  League  speaks  of  the 
"great  civically  inert  mass"  of  their  countrymen 
in  New  York,  and  declares,  "By  far  the  largest 
part  of  the  Italians  of  this  city  have  lived  a  life 
of  their  own,  almost  entirely  apart  from  the 
American  environment. "  "In  one  street, ' '  writes 
Signor  Pecorini,  "will  be  found  peasants  from 
one  Italian  village ;  in  the  next  street  the  place  of 
origin  is  different,  and  distinct  are  manners,  cus- 
toms, and  sympathies.  Entire  \dllages  have  been 
transplanted  from  Italy  to  one  New  York  street, 
and  with  the  others  have  come  the  doctor,  the 
grocer,  the  priest,  and  the  annual  celebration  of 
the  local  patron  saint." 

Among  the  foreign-born,  the  Italians  rank  low- 
est in  adhesion  to  trade-unions,  lowest  in  ability 
to  speak  English,  lowest  in  proportion  naturalized 
after  ten  years'  residence,  lowest  in  proportion  of 
children  in  school,  and  highest  in  proportion  of 
children  at  work.  Taking  into  account  the  in- 
numerable "birds  of  passage"  without  family  or 
future  in  this  country,  it  would  be  safe  to  say  that 
half,  perhaps  two-thirds,  of  our  Italian  immi- 
grants are  under  America,  not  of  it.  Far  from 
being  borne  along  with  our  onward  life,  they  drift 
round  and  round  in  a  "Little  Italy"  eddy,  or  lie 
motionless  in  some  industrial  pocket  or  crevice  at 
the  bottom  of  the  national  current. 


THE  ITALIANS 


113 


LACK  OF  MENTAL  ABILITY 

Steerage  passengers  from  a  Naples  boat  show 
a  distressing  frequency  of  low  foreheads,  open 
mouths,  weak  chins,  poor  features,  skew  faces, 
small  or  knobby  crania,  and  backless  heads.  Such 
people  lack  the  power  to  take  rational  care  of 
themselves;  hence  their  death-rate  in  New  York 
is  twice  the  general  death-rate  and  thrice  that  of 
the  Germans.  No  other  immigrants  from  Europe, 
unless  it  be  the  Portuguese  or  the  half-African 
Bravas  of  the  Azores,  show  so  low  an  earning 
power  as  the  South  Italians.  In  our  cities  the 
head  of  the  household  earns  on  an  average  $390  a 
year,  as  against  $449  for  the  North  Italian, 
$552  for  the  Bohemian,  and  $630  for  the  German. 
In  silk-mill  and  wollen-mill,  in  iron-ore  mining  and 
the  clothing  trade,  no  other  nationality  has  so 
many  low-pay  workers;  nor  does  this  industrial 
inferiority  fade  out  in  the  least  with  the  lapse  of 
time. 

Their  want  of  mechanical  aptitude  is  often  no- 
ticed. For  example,  in  a  New  England  mill 
manned  solely  by  South  Italians  only  one  out 
of  fifteen  of  the  extra  hands  taken  on  during  the 
"rush"  season  shows  sufficient  aptitude  to  be 
worth  keeping.  The  operatives  require  closer 
supervision  than  Americans,  and  each  is  given 
only  one  thing  to  do,  so  as  to  put  the  least  possible 
strain  on  his  attention. 

If  it  be  demurred  that  the  ignorant,  supersti- 
tious Neapolitan  or  Sicilian,  heir  to  centuries  of 


114    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Bourbon  misgovenunent,  cannot  be  expected  to 
prove  US  his  race  mettle,  there  are  his  children, 
bom  in  America.  "What  showing  do  they  make? 
Teachers  agree  that  the  children  of  the  South 
Italians  rank  below  the  children  of  the  North 
Italians.  They  hate  study,  make  slow  progress, 
and  quit  school  at  the  first  opportunity.  "While 
they  take  to  drawing  and  music,  they  are  poor  in 
spelling  and  language  and  very  weak  in  abstract 
mathematics.  In  the  words  of  one  superintend- 
ent, "they  lack  the  conveniences  for  thinking." 
More  than  any  other  children,  they  fall  behind 
their  grade.  They  are  below  even  the  Portuguese 
and  the  Poles,  while  at  the  other  extremity  stand 
the  children  of  the  Scandinavians  and  the  He- 
brews. The  explanation  of  the  difference  is  not 
irregularity  of  attendance,  for  among  pupils  at- 
tending three  fourths  of  the  time,  or  more,  the  per- 
centage of  South  Italians  retarded  is  fifty-six 
as  against  thirty-seven  and  a  half  per  cent,  for 
the  Eussian-Hebrew  children  and  twenty-nine  per 
cent,  for  the  German.  Nor  is  it  due  to  the  father's 
lack  of  American  experience,  for  of  the  children 
of  South  Italians  who  have  been  in  this  coun- 
try ten  or  more  years  sixty  per  cent,  are  back- 
ward, as  against  about  half  that  proportion 
among  the  Hebrews  and  the  Germans.  After  al- 
lowing for  every  disturbing  fax?tor,  it  appears 
that  these  children,  with  the  dusk  of  Saracenic  or 
Berber  ancestors  showing  in  their  cheeks,  are 
twice  as  apt  to  drop  behind  other  pupils  of  their 


Photograph  by  nine 

Board  of  Special  Inquiiy,  Ellis  Island 


I'hotograph  by  Mine.    Courtesy  of  The  Survey 


Utter  Weariness 
Bohemian  Woman  on  East  Side,  New  York,  after  the  Day's 

Work 


THE  ITALIANS 


117 


age  as  are  the  children  of  the  non-English-speak- 
ing immigrants  from  northern  Europe. 

TRAITS  OF  ITALIAN  CHAEACTEB 

The  South  Italian  is  volatile,  unstable,  soon 
hot,  soon  cool.  Says  one  observer,  ''The  Italian 
vote  here  is  a  joke.  Every  candidate  claims  it  be- 
cause they  were  *  for'  him  when  he  saw  them.  But 
the  man  who  talks  last  to  them  gets  their  vote." 
A  charity  worker  declares  that  they  change  their 
minds  "three  steps  after  they  have  left  you."  It 
is  not  surprising  that  such  people  are  unreliable. 
Credit  men  pronounce  them  ' '  very  slippery, ' '  and 
say  that  the  Italian  merchants  themselves  do  not 
extend  credit  to  them.  It  is  generally  agreed  that 
the  South  Italians  lie  more  easily  than  North 
Europeans,  and  utter  untruth  without  that 
self -consciousness  which  makes  us  awkward  liars. 
"Most  of  my  countrymen,"  says  an  educated 
Italian  in  the  consular  service  of  his  country,  "dis- 
regard their  promises  unless  it  is  to  their  advan- 
tage to  keep  them."  The  man  who  "sweareth  to 
his  own  hurt  and  changeth  not"  is  likely  to  be  a 
German  with  his  ideal  of  Treue,  an  Englishman 
with  his  ideal  of  truth,  or  an  American  with  his 
ideal  of  squareness. 

The  Italians  are  sociable.  Who  can  forget  the 
joyous,  shameless  gregariousness  of  Naples?  As 
farmers  they  cluster,  and  seem  to  covet  the  in- 
timacies of  the  tenement-house.  The  streets  of  an 
Italian  quarter  are  lively  with  chatter  and  stir 


118    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


and  folks  sitting  out  in  front  and  calling  to  one 
another.  In  their  family  life  they  are  much  less 
reserved  than  many  other  nationalities.  With  in- 
stinctive courtesy  they  make  the  visitor  welcome, 
and  their  quick  and  demonstrative  response  to 
kindly  advances  makes  them  many  friends. 
Visiting  nurses  comment  on  the  warm  expressions 
of  gratitude  they  receive  from  the  children  of 
Italians  whom  they  have  helped. 

Before  the  boards  of  inquiry  at  EUis  Island 
their  emotional  instability  stands  out  in  the  sharp- 
est contrast  to  the  self-control  of  the  Hebrew  and 
the  stolidity  of  the  Slav.  They  gesticulate  much, 
and  usually  tears  stand  in  their  eyes.  When  two 
witnesses  are  being  examined,  both  talk  at  once, 
and  their  hands  will  be  moving  all  the  time.  Their 
glances  flit  quickly  from  one  questioner  to  an- 
other, and  their  eyes  are  the  restless,  uncompre- 
hending eyes  of  the  desert  Bedouin  between  walls. 
Yet  for  all  this  ea^'er  attention,  they  are  slow  to 
catch  the  meaning  of  a  simple  question,  and  often 
it  must  be  repeated. 

Mindful  of  these  darting  eyes  and  hands,  one 
does  not  wonder  that  the  Sicilian  will  stab  his  best 
friend  in  a  sudden  quarrel  over  a  game  of  cards. 
The  Slavs  are  ferocious  in  their  cups,  but  none  is 
so  ready  with  his  knife  when  sober  as  the  South 
Italian.  In  railroad  work  other  nationalities 
shun  camps  with  many  Italians.  Contractors  are 
afraid  of  them  because  the  whole  force  will  im- 
pulsively quit  work,  perhaps  flare  into  riot,  if  they 
imagine  one  of  their  number  has  suffered  a  wrong. 


THE  ITALIANS 


119 


The  principal  of  a  school  with  four  hundred 
Sicilian  pupils  observes  that  on  the  playground 
they  are  at  once  more  passionate  and  more  vindic- 
tive than  other  children.  Elsewhere,  once  dis- 
cipline has  been  established,  "the  school  will  run 
itself";  but  in  this  school  the  teacher  "has  to  sit 
on  the  lid  all  the  time. ' '  Their  restlessness  keeps 
the  truant  officer  busy,  and  their  darting,  flicker- 
ing attention  denies  them  concentration  and  the 
steady,  telling  stroke.  For  all  their  apparent 
brightness,  when  at  fourteen  they  quit  school,  they 
are  rarely  beyond  the  third  or  fourth  grade. 

As  grinding  rusty  iron  reveals  the  bright  metal, 
so  American  competition  brings  to  light  the  race 
stutf  in  poverty-crushed  inomigrants.  But  not  all 
this  stuff  is  of  value  in  a  democracy  like  ours. 
Only  a  people  endowed  with  a  steady  attention,  a 
slow-fuse  temper,  and  a  persistent  will  can  organ- 
ize itself  for  success  in  the  international  rivalries 
to  come.  So  far  as  the  American  people  consents 
to  incorporate  with  itself  great  numbers  of  waver- 
ing, excitable,  impulsive  persons  who  cannot  or- 
ganize themselves,  it  must  in  the  end  resign  itself 
to  lower  efficiency,  to  less  democracy,  or  to  both. 

1066-70  I  5300 
1871  -75  I  27IO0 
I876-60|  Z8700 
1881-85  mum  I09S00 

ies6-9o  g_i97oooH 

189 1 -9 5  M  2B9200^^^^^ 

mil  iiiiiij   Jl^^^^^p 

1901-05  M  9S9800^M^^B^B^^^H[I^^[^B^^^^^^^J^M[| 

I90&-I0  Bii»&ioo~l^^^^^^^^^^[MM|M^^^^M^^MMWMM|^^^M[ 


Immigration  from  Italy,  1866-1910 


CHAPTEE  VI 


THE  SLAVS 

IN  the  dim  east  of  Europe,  far  from  the  verti- 
cal beams  of  civilization,  lies  the  melancholy 
Slavic  world,  with  its  150,000,000  of  human  beings 
multiplying  twice  as  fast  and  dying  twice  as  fast 
as  the  peoples  of  the  West.  Since  the  curtain  of 
history  rose,  the  Slavs  have  been  anvil  rather  than 
hammer.  Subjugated  by  the  Gauls  in  the  first 
century  B,  C,  by  the  Germans  early  in  the  Chris- 
tian era,  and  by  the  Avars  in  the  sixth  century, 
they  have  played  no  master  role  in  history  and 
their  very  name  is  a  conqueror's  insult.  In  the 
temper  of  this  race  there  appears  to  be  something 
soft  and  yielding.  For  all  their  courage,  these 
peaceful  agriculturists  have  shown  much  less  of 
the  fighting,  retaliating  instinct  than  the  Britons 
and  the  Norsemen. 

At  a  time  when  western  Europe  was  sending 
forth  armies  to  rescue  the  Holy  Sepulcher  much  of 
Slavland  lay  still  in  heathen  darkness.  Human 
sacrifices  and  the  practice  of  suttee  did  not  dis- 
appear until  the  adoption  of  Christianity.  Hel- 
mold,  a  priest  of  Liibeck,  who  in  1158  was  sent  to 
Christianize  the  Slavs,  speaks  of  them  as  a  de- 
praved and  perverse  nation, ' '  and  their  country  is 

120 


THE  SLAVS 


123 


to  him  '*a  land  of  horror  and  a  vast  solitude." 
In  1108  the  Archbishop  of  Magdeburg  writes  in  a 
pastoral  letter,  "These  cruel  people,  the  Slavs, 
have  risen  against  us."  .  .  .  ''They  have  cut  off 
the  heads  of  Christians  and  offered  them  as  sac- 
rifices. ' ' 

Unlike  the  maritime  peoples  of  the  West,  the 
Slavs  had  no  easement  from  the  colonizing  of  the 
New  World.  When  the  era  of  machine  industry 
dawned,  they  were  not  able,  as  were  the  English, 
the  French,  and  the  Germans,  to  get  into  the  sun- 
shine by  catering  to  the  world's  demand  for  cheap 
manufactured  goods.  Moreover,  they  have  had 
to  bear  the  brunt  of  Oriental  onslaught.  The 
South  Slavs — of  Servia,  Bulgaria,  Herzegovina, 
and  Macedonia — fell  under  those  Comanches  of 
Asia,  the  Turks,  so  that  only  within  the  last  thirty- 
five  years  have  the  spires  and  turrets  of  their 
submerged  civilization  reappeared  above  the  re- 
ceding Ottoman  flood. 

While  the  Bohemians  and  the  Moravians,  thanks 
to  a  great  intellectual  awakening,  have  come 
nearly  abreast  of  the  Germans,  the  bulk  of  the 
Slavs  remain  on  a  much  lower  plane  of  culture. 
In  ignorance  and  illiteracy,  in  the  prevalence  of 
superstition  and  priestcraft,  in  the  harshness  of 
church  and  state,  in  the  subservience  of  the  com- 
mon people  to  the  upper  classes,  in  the  low  posi- 
tion of  woman,  in  the  subjection  of  the  child  to  the 
parent,  in  coarseness  of  manner  and  speech,  and 
in  low  standards  of  cleanliness  and  comfort,  a 
large  part  of  the  Slavic  world  remains  at  the 


124    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


level  of  our  English  forefathers  in  the  days  of 
Henry  the  Eighth. 

According  to  mother-tongue,  there  were  in  this 
country  in  1910,  941,000  Poles,  228,000  Bohemians 
and  Moravians,  165,000  Slovaks  from  the  southern 
slopes  of  the  Carpathians,  123,000  Slovenes  from 
the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  78,000  Croatians  and 
Dalmatians,  56,000  Russians,  40,000  Bulgarians, 
Servians,  and  Montenegrins,  30,000  Slavonians, 
25,000  Ruthenians,  to  say  nothing  of  140,000 
Lithuanians  and  Letts,  who  insist  that  they  are  a 
race  apart.  All  told,  there  are  2,000,000  Slavs 
among  us,  and,  if  we  heed  the  estimates  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Slav  groups,  we  should  reckon  at 
least  3,000,000.  No  doubt,  between  five  and  six 
per  cent,  of  the  whites  in  this  country  are  of  Slavic 
blood. 

Of  the  Slav  arrivals  since  1899  nearly  three- 
fourths  are  males.  Among  the  immigrants  from 
the  Balkans,  the  men  are  from  ten  to  twenty  times 
as  numerous  as  the  women.  Thirty-two  per  cent, 
have  been  illiterates,  the  proportion  ranging  from 
1.7  per  cent,  among  the  Bohemians  to  53.4  per 
cent,  among  the  Ruthenians.  Excepting  the  Bohe- 
mians, few  of  them  have  had  any  industrial  expe- 
rience or  bring  any  valuable  skill.  It  is  as  if 
great  numbers  of  the  English  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury had  suddenly  appeared  among  us. 

OCCUPATIONS  OF  THE  SLAVIC  IMMIGRANTS 

When,  about  fifteen  years  ago,  the  great  Slav 
invasion  began,  the  American  frontier  was  remote, 


THE  SLAVS 


125 


shrunken,  and  forbidding.  The  newcomers  were 
not  in  quest  of  cheap  land,  with  independence,  so 
much  as  of  paying  jobs  from  which  they  might 
hoard  **big  money"  and  return  well  off  to  their 
homes.  They  gravitated,  therefore,  to  the  min- 
ing, metal-working,  and  packing  centers,  where 
there  is  a  demand  for  unlimited  quantities  of  raw 
labor,  provided  always  it  be  cheap.  So  these 
sturdy  peasant  lads  came  to  be  Nibelungs,  "sons 
of  the  gloom,"  haunting  our  coal-pits,  blast-fur- 
naces, coke-ovens,  smelters,  foundries,  steel-mills, 
and  metal  refineries,  doing  rough,  coarse  work 
under  skilled  men  who,  as  one  foreman  put  it  to 
me,  ''don't  want  them  to  think,  but  to  obey 
orders." 

What  irony  that  these  peasants,  straight  from 
ox-goad  and  furrow,  should  come  to  constitute, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  official  figures,  three- 
fifths  of  the  force  in  sugar  refining,  two-fifths  of 
the  force  in  meat-packing,  three-eighths  of  the 
labor  in  tanneries  and  in  oil  refineries,  one-third 
of  the  coal-miners  and  of  the  iron-  and  steel-work- 
ers, one-fourth  of  the  workers  in  carpet-mills,  and 
one-fifth  of  the  hands  in  the  clothing  trade !  On 
the  other  hand,  they  are  but  one-seventh  of  the 
labor  force  in  the  glass-factories  and  in  the  cot- 
ton-mills, one-ninth  of  the  employees  in  copper- 
mining  and  smelting  (who  are  largely  Finns), 
one-twelfth  of  our  railway  labor,  and  only  a  hand- 
ful in  the  silk  and  woolen  industries. 

For  these  manful  Slavs,  no  work  is  too  toilsome 
and  dangerous.    Their  fatalistic  acceptance  of 


126    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


risk  has  much  to  do  with  the  excessive  blood-cost 
of  certain  of  our  industries.  They  are  not  "old 
clo '  "  men,  junk-dealers,  hucksters,  peddlers,  and 
snappers-up  of  unconsidered  trifles,  as  are  some 
of  the  people  among  us.  They  have  no  nose  for 
the  small,  parasitic  trades,  but  with  a  splendid 
work  courage  they  tackle  the  heavy,  necessary 
tasks.  Large  of  body,  hard-muscled,  and  inexpert 
in  making  his  head  save  his  heels,  the  Slav  inevi- 
tably becomes  the  unskilled  laborer  in  the  basic 
industries. 

Unlike  the  Teutons  and  Scandinavians  of  the 
eighties,  whose  chief  location  was  the  country  be- 
yond Chicago,  the  later  Slavs  have  been  drawn  to 
Pennsylvania,  in  the  hard-coal  fields  and  the  Pitts- 
burgh district,  and  thence  they  have  spread  to  the 
rising  mining  and  metal-working  centers  through- 
out the  country.  So  many  are  single  men  that 
they  form  an  extraordinarily  mobile  labor  force, 
willing  to  go  anywhere  for  an  extra  two  cents  an 
hour.  Although  they  do  not  build  homes,  and 
hence  are  dependent  upon  such  housing  as  they 
can  find,  they  do  not  stagnate  in  slums,  save  as 
the  conditions  of  their  employment  impose  conges- 
tion. 

Bohemians  and  Poles  come  here  to  stay,  so  it  is 
they  who  furnish  the  farmers.  The  Bohemian 
current  began  as  far  back  as  the  fifties,  and  in 
1900  a  quarter  of  all  the  Bohemian- Americans 
were  on  the  land.  The  Poles  came  later,  and  with 
less  money,  so  that  only  one-tenth  were  then  in 
agriculture.    The  immigrants  of  the  seventies 


THE  SLAVS 


127 


sought  wild,  cheap  land,  and  therefore  the  Slav 
settlements  are  thickest  in  the  Northwest  and  the 
Southwest.  One-third  of  all  the  Polish  farmers 
are  in  Wisconsin,  while  in  Texas  Bohemian  cotton- 
growers  are  so  numerous  that  in  some  localities 
even  the  negroes  speak  Bohemian!  Of  late  raw 
Poles,  working  up  through  farm  labor  and  ten- 
ancy, are  coming  to  own  "abandoned  farms"  in 
the  Connecticut  Valley.  Crowded  with  several 
other  families  in  an  old  Yankee  farm-house,  the 
Pole  is  raising,  with  the  aid  of  his  numerous 
progeny,  incredible  crops  of  onions  and  tobacco. 
*'In  old  Hadley,"  reports  Professor  Emily  Balch 
of  Wellesley  College,  *'all  up  and  down  the  beau- 
tiful elm-shaded  street  the  old  colonial  mansions 
are  occupied  by  Poles."  In  one  year  these  Poles, 
who  were  but  one-fifth  of  the  population,  ac- 
counted for  two-thirds  of  the  births. 

EXCESSIVE  ALCOHOLISM  AMONG  THE  SLAVS 

Coming  from  an  Elizabethan  world,  the  Slav  is 
as  frankly  vinous  as  Falstaff  with  his  **cup  o' 
sack."  He  is  a  Bacchus  worshiper  unashamed, 
and  our  squeamishness  about  liquor  strikes  him 
as  either  hypocrisy  or  prudery.  He  thinks,  too, 
that  without  stimulant  he  cannot  stand  up  to  the 
grueling  work  of  mill  and  mine.  A  steel-worker, 
when  besought  to  give  up  drink,  replied,  * '  No  beer, 
no  whisky,  me  no  work."  Hence  an  incredible 
amount  of  his  wages  goes  to  line  the  till  of  the 
saloon-keeper.  In  a  steel  town  of  30,000  popula- 
tion, $60,000  are  left  with  the  saloon-keepers  the 


128    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


Saturday  and  Sunday  after  pay-day.  The  Sat- 
urday brewery-wagon  makes  the  rounds,  and 
on  a  pleasant.  Sunday  one  sees  in  the  yard 
of  each  boarding-house  a  knot  of  broad-shoul- 
dered, big-faced  men  about  a  keg  of  liquid  com- 
fort. 

It  is  at  celebrations  that  the  worst  excesses 
show  themselves.  What  with  caring  for  their 
large  families  and  their  boarders,  the  women  usu- 
ally lose  their  attractiveness  early,  and  therewith 
their  power  to  exercise  a  refining  influence  upon 
their  men-folk.  A  wedding  or  a  christening-feast 
lasts  an  entire  day,  and  toward  the  end  men 
beastly  drunk  bellow  and  fight  in  the  presence  of 
the  terrified  women  and  children.  During  festi- 
vals, too,  old  feuds,  rekindled  by  drink,  flare  up  in 
brutal  and  bloody  rows.  At  such  times  one  real- 
izes that  the  poet  Kollar's  famous  phrase  '*the 
dove-blood  of  the  Slav"  does  not  apply  to  the  ex- 
hilarated. 

Still,  their  heavy  drinking  is  spasmodic,  and 
they  are  said  to  lose  less  time  from  work  on  ac- 
count of  intoxication  than  certain  other  national- 
ities. Says  a  Jersey  City  doctor  practising  among 
the  Ruthenians,  "They  drink,  but  few  die  drunk- 
ards or  hurt  their  health  with  alcohol.  If  a  man 
does  get  drunk  he  is  likely  to  be  violent.  If  he 
strikes  his  wife  she  defends  herself  if  she  can, 
but  she  does  not  complain,  for  she  knows  he  has 
'a  right  to  hit  her'  and  that  makes  a  great  differ- 
ence." In  Slavic  neighborhoods,  American  in- 
fluence first  shows  itself  in  the  rise  of  a  community 


THE  SLAVS 


129 


sentiment  against  alcoholic  excess  and  in  a  grow- 
ing refinement  in  festal  customs. 

CRIMES  OF  THE  PRIMITIVE  PASSIONS 

For  crime  the  Slav  betrays  no  such  bent  as  the 
South  Italian.  Aside  from  petty  thieving — noted 
in  some  cases — the  complaints  of  people  near  a 
Slav  settlement  center  upon  the  affrays  that  fol- 
low in  the  wake  of  convivial  drinking.  The  Bo- 
hemians have  about  the  same  criminal  tendencies 
as  the  Germans.  The  other  Slavs  reveal  the  pro- 
pensities of  a  rude,  undeveloped  people  of  un- 
disciplined primitive  passions.  Animosity  rather 
than  cupidity  is  the  motive  of  crime.  When  the 
Slav  seeks  illicit  gain  he  takes  the  direct  path  of 
violence  rather  than  the  devious  path  of  chicane ; 
he  commits  robbery  or  burglary  rather  than  theft 
or  fraud  or  extortion.  From  crimes  against 
chastity,  and  the  loathsome  knaveries  that  center 
in  the  social  evil,  he  is  singularly  free.  Morally, 
the  stock  is  better  than  one  would  judge  from  the 
police  records  and  from  its  reputation.  No  doubt 
if  the  descendants  of  these  immigrants  have  the 
proper  training  and  surrounding  they  will  prove 
as  orderly  as  the  old  American  stock. 

SLAVIC  BRUTALITY  AND  RECKLESS  FECUNDITY 

Among  the  South  Slavs  ' '  every  married  man, ' ' 
says  Vrcevid,  as  quoted  by  Professor  W.  I. 
Thomas,  *  *  strikes  his  wife  black  and  blue  at  least 
once  a  month,  or  spreads  a  box  on  the  ear  over  her 
whole  face,  or  else  people  are  likely  to  say  that  he 


130    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


is  afraid  of  Ms  wife."  Their  popular  proverbs 
corroborate  this,  as  for  example:  "He  who  does 
not  beat  his  wife  is  no  man,"  "Strike  a  wife  and 
a  snake  on  the  head."  "One  devil  is  afraid  of  the 
cross,  the  other  (the  wife)  of  a  stick."  "The  dog 
may  howl,  but  the  wife  must  hold  her  tongue." 
In  one  wedding-song  the  bride  begs  her  husband : 
"Strike  your  wife  only  with  good  cause  and  when 
she  has  greatly  vexed  you. ' '  In  another  folk-song 
the  young  wife  sings:  "What  sort  of  husband 
are  you  to  me  ?  You  do  not  pull  my  hair,  nor  do 
you  strike  me ! ' ' 

Although  beating  the  wife  with  a  wet  rope  is 
going  out  of  practice,  the  Galician  peasant,  says 
Von  Hupka,  * '  still  regards  her  as  a  thing  belong- 
ing to  him,  which  was  made  in  the  first  place  for 
his  service."  No  wonder  the  Slav  mother  aver- 
ages eight  children!  No  wonder  there  is  an  ap- 
palling infant  mortality,  while  a  childbed  death  is 
too  often  the  fate  of  the  forspent  mother.  Little 
cares  the  stolid  peasant.  What  is  the  woman 
there  for?  Nor  is  this  view  strange  in  the  New 
World.  In  Hungary  the  Slovak  women  "bear  a 
child  a  year — 'always  either  bearing  or  nursing,' 
is  the  saying. ' '  But  the  annual  child  arrives  like- 
wise in  the  Slovak  families  of  New  York.  The 
Slav  wife  in  this  country  bears  from  two  to  two 
and  a  half  times  as  fast  as  the  wife  of  American 
parentage.  Her  daughter  born  under  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  is  seven-eighths  as  prolific  as  her  bare- 
foot immigrant  mother.  The  average  Slavic  char- 
ity case  involves  five  persons,  the  German  or  Scan- 


THE  SLAVS 


133 


dinavian  case  four  persons,  the  American  case 
three  and  one-half  persons.  A  drunken  Pole  said 
with  pride  to  the  agent  of  a  charitable  society  that 
was  supporting  his  family:  "Just  think  what 
I've  done  for  the  State!  I've  given  it  ten  chil- 
dren!" 

The  Middle  Ages  are  beginning  to  show  among 
ns.  In  twenty-one  rural  counties  of  Minnesota 
the  Polish  women  have  borne,  on  an  average,  seven 
children  in  the  course  of  fourteen  and  a  half  years 
of  married  life.  The  full  tale,  no  doubt,  will  come 
to  nine  or  ten.  Thanks  to  our  child-pitying,  child- 
saving  civilization,  the  Polish  mother  will  keep  her 
brood  nearly  as  well  as  her  American  neighbor 
with  four  or  five.  "The  Irish  for  children,"  runs 
the  proverb;  and  yet  one  Irish- American  wife  out 
of  thirteen  is  childless,  and  one  English-American 
wife  out  of  twelve.  But  on  the  Minnesota  farms 
only  one  Polish-American  wife  out  of  fifty-eight 
is  barren! 

In  a  county  where  the  Poles,  although  but  a 
third  of  the  population,  register  58  per  cent,  of  the 
births,  an  old  farmer  said  to  me :  '  *  The  Yankees 
here  are  too  lazy  to  have  kids.  The  Poles  have 
from  ten  to  fifteen  in  a  family,  and  in  a  hundred 
years  the  people  here  will  aU  be  Poles."  A  hun- 
dred years'?  Even  fourteen  years  ago  Father 
Kruszka  reckoned  that  there  were  in  this  country 
700  such  Polish  communities,  averaging  a  hundred 
families  each.  So  there  are  hundreds  of  centers 
from  which  the  Middle  Ages  spread.  Farm  by 
farm,  township  by  township,  the  displacement  of 


134    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


the  American  goes  on — a  quiet  conquest,  witliout 
spear  or  trumpet,  a  conquest  made  by  cliild-bear- 
ing  women.  The  fathers  forage,  but  it  is  the 
mothers  who  have  to  face  anguish,  exhaustion,  and 
even  death  in  the  campaign  to  possess  the  land. 
Spending  their  women  brutally,  the  Slavs  ad- 
vance; pitying  their  women,  the  Americans  re- 
treat. 

How  can  woman- worth  go  on  rising  as  this  coun- 
try fills  with  people  who  have  the  brood-mare  idea 
of  woman?  Yet  leaders  in  the  cause  of  woman- 
hood are  doing  their  best  to  hold  the  door  open  for 
the  very  tribes  who  most  despise  and  misuse  their 
sex!  On  the  other  hand,  the  new  immigration 
may  well  find  favor  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  look 
upon  the  bearing  of  ten  children  as  woman's  best 
lot,  and  are  complacent  at  seeing  the  stocks  with 
low  standards  outbreed  and  crowd  into  oblivion 
the  stocks  with  high  standards. 

SLOW  ASSIMILATIOIT 

Eastern  Europe  is  full  of  half -drowned  nation- 
alities, which  only  of  late  are  regaining  self -con- 
sciousness. Bohemians,  Slovaks,  Poles,  Lithuan- 
ians, Servians,  and  Bulgarians — each  have  had  an 

awakening,"  in  which  language  revival  and  the 
study  of  national  literature  and  history  have 
played  a  great  part.  The  immigrants  who  come 
with  this  quickened  sense  of  nationality  make  it  a 
point  of  honor  not  to  drift  selfishly  with  the 
American  current  and  so  lose  touch  with  their 
struggling  brethren  in  the  old  home.    After  re- 


THE  SLAVS 


135 


fusing  to  be  Germanized,  Eussified,  or  Magyarized 
in  the  old  country,  the  patriotic  Bohemian  or  Pole 
is  bound  to  resist  absorption  here.  It  was  the 
Irish-Americans  who  got  the  leverage  for  freeing 
Ireland.  Now  the  Bohemians  here  are  hoping  to 
win  home  rule  for  Bohemia;  while  the  Polish- 
Americans  expect  to  find  on  this  side  of  the  water 
the  fulcrum  for  the  lever  that  shall  free  Poland. 
What,  then,  more  natural  than  to  cling  to  their 
own  speech  and  traditions  in  home  and  church  and 
parish  school? 

The  vernacular  press,  of  course,  harps  ever  on 
the  chord  of  *'the  national  speech,"  so  that  the 
second  generation  may  not  drift  away  to  the  read- 
ing of  American  newspapers.  The  church,  too, 
which  carries  matters  with  a  high  hand  among  the 
Poles,  holds  the  immigrants  away  from  American- 
ization. The  good  priests  fear  lest  some  of  their 
flock  should  turn  away  from  religion,  while  the 
greedy  priests  dread  lest  the  flock  should  become 
restless  under  priestly  dictation. 

Our  million  Poles  outnumber  all  the  rest  of  the 
Slavs  in  America,  and  the  Poles  are  very  clannish. 
When  they  settle  in  groups  there  is  little  associa- 
tion between  them  and  their  neighbors.  "In  the 
communities  visited, ' '  reports  the  Industrial  Com- 
mission, "farmers  of  German,  Scandinavian, 
Irish,  Bohemian,  Belgian,  Swiss,  and  American 
origin  were  found  living  in  juxtaposition  to  Poles. 
In  virtually  every  instance  the  Pole  was  con- 
sidered one  degree  lower  than  his  neighbors." 
"Neither  the  Poles  as  a  body  nor  the  others  de- 


136    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


sire  to  fuse  socially,  and  the  Bohemians  felt  well 
above  their  Slavic  brethren."  The  farmers  look 
down  on  the  Poles  as  uncleanly,  intemperate, 
quarrelsome,  ignorant,  priest-ridden,  and  hard  on 
women  and  children.  When  a  few  Poles  have 
come  into  a  neighborhood,  the  other  farmers  be- 
come restless,  sell  out,  and  move  away.  Soon  a 
parish  is  organized,  church  and  parish  school 
arise,  the  public  school  decays,  and  Slavdom  has 
a  new  outpost. 

The  core  of  the  large  settlement  is  likely  to  be  a 
rancid  bit  of  the  Old  World.  Clerical  domination 
to  a  degree  not  tolerated  among  other  Roman 
Catholics,  a  stately  church  overlooking  mean 
farm-houses,  numerous  church  holidays,  a  tiny 
public  school,  built  wholly  out  of  State  grant,  with 
a  sister  in  the  garb  of  her  order  as  schoolmistress, 
a  big  parish  school,  using  only  Polish  and  teaching 
chiefly  the  catechism,  a  high  illiteracy  and  a  dense 
ignorance  among  lads  born  on  American  soil, 
crimes  of  violence  rather  than  crimes  of  cunning, 
horror  of  water  applied  inside  or  outside,  aver- 
sion to  fresh  air,  barefoot  women  at  work  in  the 
fields,  with  wretched  housekeeping  as  the  natural 
result,  saloons  patronized  by  both  sexes,  the  priest 
frequently  urging  his  flock  to  "have  as  many  chil- 
dren as  God  will  give  them,"  much  loth  mother- 
hood, early  death  from  excessive  child-bearing, 
large  families  brought  up  by  the  third,  fourth,  or 
fifth  wife,  harsh  discipline  of  children,  political 
apathy,  a  controlled  vote,  and  an  open  contempt 
for  Americans  and  their  principles. 


THE  SLAVS 


137 


Little  better  off  are  the  Slavs  clustered  by  them- 
selves in  some  ''mining-patch"  in  the  coal-fields 
or  in  the  industrial  quarter  of  a  metal  town.  The 
general  population  does  not  associate  with  them, 
and  they  have  their  own  church,  school,  customs, 
and  festivals.  The  men  pick  up  a  little  English, 
the  women  none  at  all.  It  is  really  the  children 
that  are  the  battle-ground  of  old  and  new.  Let 
them  mingle  freely  with  Young  America,  and  no 
pressure  from  their  parents  can  make  them  re- 
main different  from  their  playmates.  They  dread 
the  nickname  of ' '  Hun, "  "  Hunkie, "  or  "  Bohunk ' ' 
as  if  it  were  poison,  and  nothing  will  induce  them 
to  use  their  home  tongue  or  take  part  in  the  or- 
ganized life  of  their  nationality. 

In  the  big  rural  settlement,  however,  the  chil- 
dren can  be  kept  from  outsiders,  and  the  parents, 
who  want  them  to  settle  on  the  farm,  usually  have 
their  way.  A  few  of  the  more  restless  dive  off  the 
island  into  circumambient  America.  For  a  little 
time  the  second  generation  appears  progressive; 
it  dresses  flashily  and  shows  itself  "sporty." 
But  after  it  marries  it  loses  spirit,  settles  down, 
and  obeys  priest  and  parent.  Whether  the  sys- 
tem can  hold  the  third  generation  remains  to  be 
seen. 

Obviously,  the  bird-of-passage  Slovak  or  Croat 
who  has  left  a  wife  at  home,  and  who  roughs  it 
with  his  compatriots  in  a  "stag"  boarding-house 
in  a  dreary  "black  country,"  is  a  poor  subject  for 
assimilation.  His  life  is  bounded  by  the  "board- 
ing boss,"  the  saloon-keeper,  the  private  banker, 


138    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


and  the  priest — all  of  them  of  his  own  folk.  Aside 
from  the  foreman's  cursing,  American  life 
reaches  him  only  through  the  eye,  and  then  only 
the  worst  side  of  it.  But  for  the  good  pay,  he 
would  hate  his  life  here;  and  he  goes  back  home 
with  little  idea  of  America  save  that  it  is  a  land  of 
big  chances  to  make  money. 

SMALL  ABILITY  OF  IMMIGRANT  SLAVS 

Without  calling  in  question  the  worth  of  the 
Slavic  race,  one  may  note  that  the  immigrant 
Slavs  have  small  reputation  for  capacity.  Many 
observers,  after  allowing  for  their  illiteracy  and 
lack  of  opportunity,  still  insist  that  they  have  little 
to  contribute  to  our  people.  These  people 
haven't  any  natural  ability  to  transmit,"  said  a 
large  employer  of  Slavs.  "You  may  grind  and 
polish  dull  minds  all  you  want  to  in  the  public 
schools,  but  you  never  will  get  a  keen  edge  on 
them  because  the  steel  is  poor."  "They  aren't 
up  to  the  American  grade,"  insisted  the  manager 
of  a  steel- works.  "We  have  a  'suggestion  box,* 
and  we  reward  valuable  suggestions  from  our 
men,  but  precious  few  ever  come  from  immigrant 
labor."  The  labor  agent  of  a  great  implement- 
works  rates  the  immigrant  75  in  ability  as  com- 
pared with  the  American.  A  Bohemian  leader 
puts  his  people  above  the  Americans  in  music  and 
the  fine  arts,  but  concedes  the  superiority  of  the 
Americans  in  constructive  imagination,  organiz- 
ing ability,  and  tenacity  of  purpose.  "The 


THE  SLAVS 


139 


Czechs,"  he  says,  ''are  strong  in  resistance  but 
are  not  aggressive." 

A  steel-town  superintendent  of  schools  finds  the 
bulk  of  the  children  of  the  Slavs  *  *  rather  sluggish 
intellectually. ' '  They  do  well  in  the  lower  grades, 
where  memory  counts  most;  but  in  the  higher 
grades,  where  association  is  called  for,  they  fall 
behind.  Of  23,000  pupils  of  non-English-speak- 
ing fathers,  43.4  per  cent,  were  found  to  be  behind 
their  grade ;  the  percentage  of  retardation  for  the 
children  of  Bohemian  fathers  was  only  35.6  per 
cent. ;  but  for  Poles,  the  retardation  was  58.1  per 
cent.,  and  for  Slovaks  54.5  per  cent.  While  this 
showing  is  poor,  there  are  good  school  men  who 
stoutly  maintain  that  it  is  still  too  soon  to  judge 
what  the  Slav-American  can  do. 

THE  ALAKMING  PKOSPECT  OF  SLAVIC  IMMIGRATION 

An  outflow  of  political  exiles  comes  to  an  end 
when  there  is  a  turn  of  the  political  wheel ;  but  a 
stream  squeezed  out  by  population  pressure  may 
flow  on  forever.  So  long  as  the  birth-rate  re- 
mains high,  the  mother-country  is  not  depleted  by 
the  hemorrhage.  "What  has  been  the  effect  of 
emigration  to  America  upon  conditions  in  Bo- 
hemia?" I  asked  of  an  intelligent  Czech.  "Bo- 
hemia," he  replied,  with  emphasis,  "is  just  as 
crowded  to-day;  the  struggle  is  just  as  hard  as  if 
never  a  Bohemian  had  left  for  America."  "Will 
Polish  emigration  remain  large?"  I  asked  a 
leader  of  the  Polish- Americans.    "Yes,"  he  re- 


140    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


plied, ' '  it  will  continue  for  a  long  time.  The  Poles 
multiply  at  an  extreme  rate,  and  there  is  no  room 
for  them  to  expand  in  Poland." 

Still,  these  minor  currents  may  be  lost  in  the 
flood  that  is  likely  to  roll  in  upon  us,  once  the  great 
central  Slavic  mass  of  80,000,000  "true  Russians " 
is  tapped.  **This,"  observes  the  Immigration 
Commission,  "affords  a  practically  unlimited 
source  of  immigration,  and  one  which  may  reason- 
ably be  expected  to  contribute  largely  to  the  move- 
ment from  Europe  to  the  United  States  in  the 
future."  "The  economic  conditions  which  in 
large  part  impel  the  emigration  of  these  races 
(Russian  Hebrews,  Poles,  Lithuanians  and  Finns) 
prevail  also  among  true  Russians,  and  already 
they  are  beginning  to  seek  relief  through  emigra- 
tion." 

So  the  tide  from  Slavland  may  swell,  and  the 
superfecund  Slavs  may  push  to  the  wall  the  Anglo- 
Americans,  the  Irish-Americans,  the  Welsh- 
Americans,  the  German-Americans,  and  the  rest, 
until  the  invasion  of  our  labor  market  by  hordes 
of  still  cheaper  West  Asiatics  shall  cause  the  Slav, 
too,  to  lose  interest  in  America,  even  as  the  Briton, 
the  Hibernian,  the  Teuton,  and  the  Scandinavian 
have  lost  interest  in  America. 


riiutograph  i>y  Hine 

Russian  Jews,  Ellis  Island 


C'  11  r; .  s \  .  t  The  Survey 

Hindoo  Immigrants 


CHAPTER  Vn 


THE  EAST  EUKOPEAN  HEBREWS 

IN  his  defense  of  Flaccus,  a  Roman  governor 
who  had  squeezed"  his  Jewish  subjects, 
Cicero  lowers  his  voice  when  he  comes  to  speak  of 
the  Jews,  for,  as  he  explains  to  the  judges,  there 
are  persons  who  might  excite  against  him  this 
numerous,  clannish  and  powerful  element.  With 
much  greater  reason  might  an  American  lower  his 
voice  to-day  in  discussing  two  million  Hebrew 
immigrants  united  by  a  strong  race  consciousness 
and  already  ably  represented  at  every  level  of 
wealth,  power,  and  influence  in  the  United  States. 

At  the  time  of  the  Revolution  there  were  per- 
haps 700  Jewish  families  in  the  colonies.  In  1826 
the  number  of  Jews  in  the  United  States  was  es- 
timated at  6000;  in  1840,  at  15,000;  in  1848,  at 
50,000.  The  immigration  from  Germany  brought 
great  numbers,  and  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War  there  were  probably  150,000  Jews  in  this 
country.  In  1888,  after  the  first  wave  from 
Russia,  they  were  estimated  at  400,000.  Since  the 
beginning  of  1899,  one  and  one-third  millions  of 
Hebrews  have  settled  in  this  country. 

Easily  one-fifth  of  the  Hebrews  in  the  world  are 
with  us,  and  the  freshet  shows  no  signs  of  sub- 
sidence.  America  is  coming  to  be  hailed  as  the 

143 


144    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


"promised  land,"  and  Zionist  dreams  are  yield- 
ing to  the  conviction  that  it  will  be  much  easier 
for  the  keen-witted  Russian  Jews  to  prosper  here 
as  a  free  component  in  a  nation  of  a  hundred 
millions  than  to  grub  a  living  out  of  the  baked 
hillsides  of  Palestine.  With  Mr.  Zangwill  they 
exult  that:  America  has  ample  room  for  all 
the  six  millions  of  the  Pale ;  any  one  of  her  fifty 
states  could  absorb  them.  And  next  to  being  in 
a  country  of  their  own,  there  could  be  no  better 
fate  for  them  than  to  be  together  in  a  land  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty,  of  whose  Constitution 
Christianity  forms  no  part  and  where  their  collec- 
tive votes  would  practically  guarantee  them 
against  future  persecution. ' ' 

Hence  the  endeavor  of  the  Jews  to  control  the 
immigration  policy  of  the  United  States.  Al- 
though theirs  is  but  a  seventh  of  our  net  immigra- 
tion, they  led  the  fight  on  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission's bill.  The  power  of  the  million  Jews  in 
the  metropolis  lined  up  the  Congressional  delega- 
tion from  New  York  in  solid  opposition  to  the 
literacy  test.  The  systematic  campaign  in  news- 
papers and  magazines  to  break  down  all  argu- 
ments for  restriction  and  to  calm  nativist  fears  is 
waged  by  and  for  one  race.  Hebrew  money  is  be- 
hind the  National  Liberal  Immigration  League 
and  its  numerous  publications.  From  the  paper 
before  the  commercial  body  or  the  scientific  as- 
sociation to  the  heavy  treatise  produced  with  the 
aid  of  the  Baron  de  Hirsch  Fund,  the  literature 
that  proves  the  blessings  of  immigration  to  all 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  145 


classes  in  America  emanates  from  subtle  Hebrew 
brains.  In  order  to  admit  their  brethren  from 
the  Pale  the  brightest  of  the  Semites  are  keeping 
our  doors  open  to  the  dullest  of  the  Aryans ! 

Migrating  as  families  the  Hebrews  from  eastern 
Europe  are  pretty  evenly  divided  between  the 
sexes.  Their  illiteracy  is  26  per  cent.,  about  the 
average.  Artisans  and  professional  men  are 
rather  numerous  among  them.  They  come  from 
cities  and  settle  in  cities — half  of  them  in  New 
York.  Centuries  of  enforced  Ghetto  life  seem  to 
have  bred  in  them  a  herding  instinct.  No  other 
physiques  can  so  well  withstand  the  toxins  of 
urban  congestion.  Save  the  Italians,  more  Jews 
will  crowd  upon  a  given  space  than  any  other 
nationality.  As  they  prosper  they  do  not  propor- 
tionately enlarge  their  quarters.  Of  Boston  tene- 
ment-house Jews  Dr.  Bushee  testifies:  Their 
inborn  love  of  money-making  leads  them  to  crowd 
into  the  smallest  quarters.  Families  having  very 
respectable  bank  accounts  have  been  known  to 
occupy  cellar  rooms  where  damp  and  cold  streaked 
the  walls."  ** There  are  actually  streets  in  the 
West  End  where,  while  Jews  are  moving  in,  negro 
housewives  are  gathering  up  their  skirts  and 
seeking  a  more  spotless  environment." 

The  first  stream  of  Russo-Hebrew  immigrants 
started  flowing  in  1882  in  consequence  of  the  re- 
actionary policy  of  Alexander  III.  It  contained 
many  students  and  members  of  scholarly  families, 
who  stimulated  intellectual  activity  among  their 
fellows  here  and  were  leaders  in  radical  thought. 


146    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


These  idealists  established  newspapers  in  the  Jew- 
ish-German Jargon  and  thus  made  Yiddish 
(Judisch)  a  literary  language.  The  second 
stream  reached  us  after  1890  and  brought  immi- 
grants who  were  not  steeped  in  modern  ideas  but 
held  to  Talmudic  traditions  and  the  learning  of 
the  rabbis.  The  more  recent  flow  taps  lower  so- 
cial strata  and  is  prompted  by  economic  motives. 
These  later  arrivals  lack  both  the  ideahsm  of  the 
first  stream  and  the  religious  culture  of  the  sec- 
ond. 

Besides  the  Russian  Jews  we  are  receiving  large 
numbers  from  Galicia,  Hungary,  and  Roumania. 
The  last  are  said  to  be  of  a  high  type,  whereas 
the  Galician  Jews  are  the  lowest.  It  is  these 
whom  Joseph  Pennell,  the  illustrator,  found  to 
be  "people  who,  despite  their  poverty,  never  work 
with  their  hands ;  whose  town  ...  is  but  a  hide- 
ous nightmare  of  dirt,  disease  and  poverty"  and 
its  misery  and  ugliness  *'the  outcome  of  their  own 
habits  and  way  of  life  and  not,  as  is  usually  sup- 
posed, forced  upon  them  by  Christian  persecu- 
tors." 

OCGUPATIONS 

The  Hebrew  immigrants  rarely  lay  hand  to  basic 
production.  In  tilHng  the  soil,  in  food  growing, 
in  extracting  minerals,  in  building,  construction 
and  transportation  they  have  little  part.  Some- 
times they  direct  these  operations,  often  they 
finance  them,  but  even  in  direst  poverty  they  con- 
trive to  avoid  hard  muscular  labor.    Under  pres- 


THE  EAST  EUEOPEAN  HEBEEWS  147 


sure  the  Jew  takes  to  the  pack  as  the  Italian  to 
the  pick. 

In  the  '80 's  numerous  rural  colonies  of  Hebrews 
were  planted,  but,  despite  much  help  from  outside, 
all  except  the  colonies  near  Vineland,  New  Jersey, 
utterly  failed.  In  New  York  and  New  England 
there  are  more  than  a  thousand  Hebrew  farmers, 
but  most  of  them  speculate  in  real  estate,  keep 
summer  boarders,  or  depend  on  some  side  enter- 
prise— peddling,  cattle  trading  or  junk  buying — 
for  a  material  part  of  their  income.  The  Hebrew 
farmers,  said  to  number  in  all  6000,  maintain  a 
federation  and  are  provided  with  a  farmers' 
journal.  New  colonies  are  launched  at  brief  in- 
tervals, and  Jewish  city  boys  are  being  trained 
for  country  life.  Still,  not  over  one  Hebrew 
family  in  a  hundred  is  on  the  land  and  the  rural 
trend  is  but  a  trickle  compared  with  the  huge  in- 
flow. 

Perhaps  two-fifths  of  the  Hebrew  immigrants 
gain  their  living  from  garment-making.  Naturally 
the  greater  part  of  the  clothing  and  dry  goods 
trade,  the  country  over,  is  in  their  hands.  They 
make  eighty-five  per  cent,  of  the  cigars  and  most 
of  the  domestic  cigarettes.  They  purchase  all  but 
an  insignificant  part  of  the  leaf  tobacco  from  the 
farmers  and  sell  it  to  the  manufacturers.  They 
are  prominent  in  the  retailing  of  spirits,  and  the 
J ewish  distiller  is  almost  as  typical  as  the  German 
brewer. 

None  can  beat  the  Jew  at  a  bargain,  for  through 
all  the  intricacies  of  commerce  he  can  scent  his 


148    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


profit.  The  peddler,  junk  dealer,  or  pawn  broker 
is  on  the  first  rung  of  the  ladder.  The  more  ca- 
pable rise  in  a  few  years  to  be  theatrical  managers, 
bankers  or  heads  of  department  stores.  More- 
over great  numbers  are  clerks  and  salesmen  and 
thousands  are  municipal  and  building  contractors. 
Many  of  the  second  generation  enter  the  civil 
service  and  the  professions.  Already  in  several 
of  the  largest  municipalities  and  in  the  Federal 
bureaus  a  large  proportion  of  the  positions  are 
held  by  keen-witted  Jews.  Twenty  years  ago  un- 
der the  spoils  system  the  Irish  held  most  of  the 
city  jobs  in  New  York.  Now  under  the  test  system 
the  Jews  are  driving  them  out.  Among  the  school 
teachers  of  the  city  Jewesses  outnumber  the 
women  of  any  other  nationality.  Owing  to  their 
aversion  to  "blind-alley"  occupations  Jewish  girls 
shun  housework  and  crowd  into  the  factories,  while 
those  who  can  get  training  become  stenogra- 
phers, bookkeepers,  accountants  and  private  sec- 
retaries. One-thirteenth  of  the  students  in  our 
seventy-seven  leading  universities  and  colleges 
are  of  Hebrew  parentage.  The  young  Jews  take 
eagerly  to  medicine  and  it  is  said  that  from  seven 
hundred  to  nine  hundred  of  the  physicians  in  New 
York  are  of  their  race.  More  noticeable  is  the  in- 
flux into  dentistry  and  especially  into  pharmacy. 
Their  trend  into  the  legal  profession  has  been 
pronounced,  and  of  late  there  is  a  movement  of 
Jewish  students  into  engineering,  agriculture  and 
forestry. 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  149 


MORALS 

The  Jewish  immigrants  cherish  a  pure,  close- 
knit  family  life  and  the  position  of  the  woman  in 
the  home  is  one  of  dignity.  More  than  any  other 
immigrants  they  are  ready  to  assume  the  support 
of  distant  needy  relatives.  They  care  for  their 
own  poor,  and  the  spirit  of  cooperation  among 
them  is  very  noticeable.  Their  temper  is  sensi- 
tive and  humane;  very  rarely  is  a  Jew  charged 
with  any  form  of  brutality.  There  is  among 
them  a  fine  elite  which  responds  to  the  appeal  of 
the  ideal  and  is  found  in  every  kind  of  amehora- 
tive  work. 

Nevertheless,  fair-minded  observers  agree  that 
certaiu  bad  qualities  crop  out  all  too  often  among 
these  eastern  Europeans.  A  school  principal  re- 
marks that  his  Jewish  pupils  are  more  importu- 
nate to  get  a  mark  changed  than  his  other  pupils. 
A  settlement  warden  who  during  the  summer 
entertains  hundreds  of  nursing  slum  mothers  at 
a  country  **home"  says:  *'The  Jewish  mothers 
are  always  asking  for  something  extra  over  the 
regular  kit  we  provide  each  guest  for  her  stay." 
**The  last  thing  the  son  of  Jacob  wants,"  ob- 
serves an  eminent  sociologist,  "  is  a  square  deal. ' ' 
A  veteran  New  York  social  worker  cannot  for- 
give the  Ghetto  its  littering  and  defiling  of  the 
parks.  ''Look  at  Tompkins  Square,"  he  ex- 
claimed hotly,  ''and  compare  it  with  what  it  was 
twenty-five  years  ago  amid  a  German  popula- 
tion!"  As  for  the  caretakers  of  the  parks  their 


150    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


comment  on  this  matter  is  unprintable.  Genial 
settlement  residents,  who  never  tire  of  praising 
Italian  or  Greek,  testify  that  no  other  immigrants 
are  so  noisy,  pushing  and  disdainful  of  the  rights 
of  others  as  the  Hebrews.  That  the  worst  ex- 
ploiters of  these  immigrants  are  sweaters,  land- 
lords, employers  and  "white  slavers"  of  their 
own  race  no  one  gainsays. 

The  authorities  complain  that  the  East  Euro- 
pean Hebrews  feel  no  reverence  for  law  as  such 
and  are  willing  to  break  any  ordinance  they  find 
in  their  way.  The  fact  that  pleasure-loving  Jew- 
ish business  men  spare  Jewesses  but  pursue  Gen- 
tile girls  excites  bitter  comment.  The  insurance 
companies  scan  a  Jewish  fire  risk  more  closely 
than  any  other.  Credit  men  say  the  Jewish 
merchant  is  often  "slippery"  and  will  "fail"  in 
order  to  get  rid  of  his  debts.  For  lying  the  im- 
migrant has  a  very  bad  reputation.  In  the  North 
End  of  Boston  "the  readiness  of  the  Jews  to 
commit  perjury  has  passed  into  a  proverb." 
Conscientious  immigration  officials  become  very 
sore  over  the  incessant  fire  of  false  accusations 
to  which  they  are  subjected  by  the  Jewish  press 
and  societies.  United  States  senators  complain 
that  during  the  close  of  the  struggle  over  the  im- 
migration bill  they  were  overwhelmed  with  a  tor- 
rent of  crooked  statistics  and  misrepresentations 
by  the  Hebrews  fighting  the  literacy  test. 

Graver  yet  is  the  charge  that  these  East  Euro- 
pean immigrants  lower  standards  wherever  they 
enter.    In  the  boot  and  shoe  trade  some  Hebrew 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  153 


jobbers  who,  after  sending  in  an  order  to  the  man- 
ufacturer, find  the  market  taking  an  unexpected 
downward  turn,  will  reject  a  consignment  on 
some  pretext  in  order  to  evade  a  loss.  Says  Dr. 
Bushee:  **The  shame  of  a  variety  of  under- 
handed methods  in  trade  not  easily  punishable  by 
law  must  be  laid  at  the  door  of  a  certain  type  of 
Jew."  It  is  charged  that  for  personal  gain  the 
Jewish  dealer  wilfully  disregards  the  customs  of 
the  trade  and  thereby  throws  trade  ethics  into 
confusion.  Physicians  and  lawyers  complain 
that  their  Jewish  colleagues  tend  to  break  down 
the  ethics  of  their  professions.  It  is  certain  that 
Jews  have  commercialized  the  social  evil,  com- 
mercialized the  theatre,  and  done  much  to  com- 
mercialize the  newspaper. 

The  Jewish  leaders  admit  much  truth  in  the 
impeachment.  One  accounts  for  the  bad  reputa- 
tion of  his  race  in  the  legal  profession  by  point- 
ing out  that  they  entered  the  tricky  branches  of 
it,  viz.,  commercial  law  and  criminal  law.  Says 
a  high  minded  lawyer:  '*If  the  average  Amer- 
ican entered  law  as  we  have  to,  without  money, 
connections  or  adequate  professional  education, 
he  would  be  a  shyster  too."  Another  observes 
that  the  sharp  practice  of  the  Russo-Jewish  law- 
yer belongs  to  the  earlier  part  of  his  career  when 
he  must  succeed  or  starve.  As  he  prospers  his 
sense  of  responsibility  grows.  For  example, 
some  years  ago  the  Bar  Association  of  New  York 
opposed  the  promotion  of  a  certain  Hebrew  law- 
yer to  the  bench  on  the  ground  of  his  unprofes- 


154    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


sional  practices.  But  this  same  lawyer  made  one 
of  the  best  judges  the  city  ever  had,  and  when  he 
retired  he  was  banqueted  by  the  Association. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  lower  class  of 
Jews  of  eastern  Europe  reach  here  moral  crip- 
ples, their  souls  warped  and  dwarfed  by  iron 
circumstance.  The  experience  of  Eussian  re- 
pression has  made  them  haters  of  government 
and  corrupters  of  the  police.  Life  amid  a  big- 
oted and  hostile  population  has  left  them  aloof 
and  thick-skinned.  A  tribal  spirit  intensified  by 
social  isolation  prompts  them  to  rush  to  the  res- 
cue of  the  caught  rascal  of  their  own  race.  Pent 
within  the  Talmud  and  the  Pale  of  Settlement, 
their  interests  have  become  few,  and  many  of 
them  have  developed  a  monstrous  and  repulsive 
love  of  gain.  When  now,  they  use  their  Old- 
World  shove  and  wile  and  lie  in  a  society  like 
ours,  as  unprotected  as  a  snail  out  of  its  shell, 
they  rapidly  push  up  into  a  position  of  pros- 
perous parasitism*,  leaving  scorn  and  curses  in 
their  wake. 

Gradually,  however,  it  dawns  upon  this  twisted 
soul  that  here  there  is  no  need  to  be  weazel  or 
hedgehog.  He  finds  himself  in  a  new  game,  the 
rules  of  which  are  made  by  all  the  players.  He 
himself  is  a  part  of  the  state  that  is  weakened  by 
his  law-breaking,  a  member  of  the  profession  that 
is  degraded  by  his  sharp  practices.  So  smirk  and 
cringe  and  trick  presently  fall  away  from  him, 
and  he  stands  erect.  This  is  why,  in  the  same 
profession  at  the  same  time,  those  most  active  in 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  155 


breaking  down  standards  are  Jews  and  tliose 
most  active  in  raising  standards  are  Jews — of  an 
earlier  coming  or  a  later  generation.  *'0n  the 
average,"  says  a  Jewish  leader,  "only  the  third 
generation  feels  perfectly  at  home  in  American 
society."  This  explains  the  frequent  statement 
that  the  Jews  are  "the  limit" — among  the  worst 
of  the  worst  and  among  the  best  of  the  best. 

CRIME 

The  Hebrew  immigrants  usually  commit  their 
crimes  for  gain;  and  among  gainful  crimes  they 
lean  to  gambling,  larceny,  and  the  receiving  of 
stolen  goods  rather  than  to  the  more  daring 
crimes  of  robbery  and  burglary.  The  fewness  of 
the  Hebrews  in  prison  has  been  used  to  spread  the 
impression  that  they  are  uncommonly  law-abid- 
ing. The  fact  is  it  is  harder  to  catch  and  convict 
criminals  of  cunning  than  criminals  of  violence. 
The  chief  of  police  of  any  large  city  will  bear  em- 
phatic testimony  as  to  the  trouble  Hebrew  law- 
breakers cause  him.  Most  alarming  is  the  great 
increase  of  criminality  among  Jewish  young  men 
and  the  growth  of  prostitution  among  Jewish 
girls.  Says  a  Jewish  ex-assistant  attorney-gen- 
eral of  the  United  States  in  an  address  before  the 
B'nai  B'rith:  "Suddenly  we  find  appearing  in 
the  life  of  the  large  cities  the  scarlet  woman  of 
Jewish  birth."  "In  the  women's  night  court  of 
New  York  City  and  on  gilded  Broadway  the  ma- 
jority of  street  walkers  bear  Jewish  names." 
"This  sudden  break  in  Jewish  morality  was  not 


156    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


natural.  It  was  a  product  of  cold,  calculating, 
mercenary  methods,  devised  and  handled  by  men 
of  Jewish  birth. ' '  Says  the  president  of  the  Con- 
ference of  American  Eabbis:  "The  Jemsh 
world  has  been  stirred  from  center  to  circumfer- 
ence by  the  recent  disclosures  of  the  part  Jews 
have  played  in  the  pursuance  of  the  white  slave 
traffic."  On  May  14,  1911,  a  Yiddish  paper  in 
New  York  said,  editorially: 

"It  is  almost  impossible  to  comprehend  the  in- 
difference with  which  the  large  New  York  Jewish 
population  hears  and  reads,  day  after  day,  about 
the  thefts  and  murders  that  are  perpetrated  every 
day  by  Jewish  gangs — real  bands  of  robbers — 
and  no  one  raises  a  voice  of  protest,  and  no  de- 
mand is  made  for  the  protection  of  the  reputation 
of  the  Jews  of  America  and  for  the  life  and  prop- 
erty of  the  Jewish  citizens." 

**A  few  years  ago  when  Commissioner  Bing- 
ham came  out  with  a  statement  about  Jewish 
thieves,  the  Jews  raised  a  cry  of  protest  that 
reached  the  heavens.  The  main  cry  was  that 
Bingham  exaggerated  and  overestimated  the 
number  of  Jewish  criminals.  But  when  we  hear 
of  the  murders,  hold-ups  and  burglaries  com- 
mitted in  the  Jewish  section  by  Jewish  criminals, 
we  must,  with  heartache,  justify  Mr.  Bingham." 

Two  weeks  later  the  same  paper  said:  ''How 
much  more  will  Jewish  hearts  bleed  when  the 
English  press  comes  out  with  descriptions  of 
gambling  houses  packed  "with  Jewish  gamblers, 
of  the  blind  cigar  stores  where  Jewish  thieves 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  157 


and  murderers  are  reared,  of  the  gangs  that  work 
systematically  and  fasten  like  vampires  upon  the 
peaceable  Jewish  population,  and  of  all  the  other 
nests  of  theft,  robbery,  murder,  and  lawlessness 
that  have  multiplied  in  our  midst. ' ' 

This  startling  growth  reflects  the  moral  crisis 
through  which  many  immigrants  are  passing. 
Enveloped  in  the  husks  of  medievalism,  the  re- 
ligion of  many  a  Jew  perishes  in  the  American 
environment.  The  immigrant  who  loses  his  re- 
ligion is  worse  than  the  religionless  American 
because  his  early  standards  are  dropped  along 
with  his  faith.  With  his  clear  brain  sharpened 
in  the  American  school,  the  egoistic,  conscience- 
less young  Jew  constitutes  a  menace.  As  a  Jew- 
ish labor  leader  said  to  me,  *'the  non-morality  of 
the  young  Jewish  business  men  is  fearful.  So- 
cialism inspires  an  ethics  in  the  heart  of  the  Jew- 
ish workingman,  but  there  are  many  without 
either  the  old  religion  or  the  new.  I  am  aghast 
at  the  consciencelessness  of  the  Luft-proletariat 
without  feeling  for  place,  community  or  nation- 
ahty." 

RACE  TRAITS 

If  the  Hebrews  are  a  race  certainly  one  of  their 
traits  is  intellectuality.  In  Boston  the  milk  sta- 
tion nurse  gets  far  more  result  from  her  explana- 
tions to  Jewish  mothers  than  from  her  talks  to 
Irish  or  Italian  mothers.  The  Jewish  parent, 
however  grasping,  rarely  exploits  his  children, 
for  he  appreciates  how  schooling  will  add  to  their 


158    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


earning  capacity.  The  young  Jews  liave  the 
foresight  to  avoid  "blind  alley"  occupations. 
Between  the  years  of  fourteen  and  seventeen  the 
Irish  and  Italian  boys  earn  more  than  the  Jewish 
lads;  but  after  eighteen  the  Jewish  boys  will  be 
earning  more,  for  they  have  selected  occupations 
in  which  you  can  work  up.  The  Jew  is  the  easi- 
est man  to  sell  life  insurance  to,  for  he  catches  the 
idea  sooner  than  any  other  immigrant.  As 
philanthropist  he  is  the  first  to  appreciate  scien- 
tific charity.  As  voter  he  is  the  first  to  repudi- 
ate the  political  leader  and  rise  to  a  broad  out- 
look. As  exploited  worker  he  is  the  first  to  find 
his  way  to  a  theory  of  his  hard  lot,  viz.,  capital- 
ism. As  employer  he  is  quick  to  respond  to  the 
idea  of  ''welfare  work."  The  Jewish  patrons  of 
the  libraries  welcome  guidance  in  their  reading 
and  they  want  always  the  best ;  in  fiction,  Dickens, 
Tolstoi,  Zola;  in  philosophy,  Darwin,  Spencer, 
Haeckel.  No  other  readers  are  so  ready  to  tackle 
the  heavy-weights  in  economics  and  sociology. 

From  many  school  principals  comes  the  obser- 
vation that  their  Jewish  pupils  are  either  very 
bright  or  distinctly  dull.  Among  the  Russo-Jew- 
ish  children  many  fall  behind  but  some  distin- 
guish themselves  in  their  studies.  The  propor- 
tion of  backward  pupils  is  about  the  average  for 
school  children  of  non-English-speaking  parent- 
age ;  but  the  brilliant  pupils  indicate  the  presence 
in  Hebrew  immigration  of  a  gifted  element  which 
scarcely  shows  itself  in  other  streams  of  immigra- 
tion.   Teachers  report  that  their  Jewish  pupils 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  159 


''seem  to  have  hungry  minds."  They  "grasp  in- 
formation as  they  do  everything  else,  recognizing 
it  as  the  requisite  for  success."  Says  a  princi- 
pal: "Their  progress  in  studies  is  simply  an- 
other manifestation  of  the  acquisitiveness  of  the 
race."  Another  thinks  their  school  successes 
are  won  more  by  intense  application  than  by 
natural  superiority,  and  judges  his  Irish  pupils 
would  do  still  better  if  only  they  would  work  as 
many  hours. 

The  Jewish  gift  for  mathematics  and  chess  is 
well  known.  They  have  great  imagination,  but  it 
is  the  "combinative"  imagination  rather  than 
the  free  poetic  fancy  of  the  Celt.  They  analyze 
out  the  factors  of  a  process  and  mentally  put  them 
together  in  new  ways.  Their  talent  for  antici- 
pating the  course  of  the  market,  making  fresh 
combinations  in  business,  diagnosing  diseases, 
and  suggesting  scientific  hypotheses  is  not  ques- 
tioned. On  the  other  hand,  an  eminent  savant 
thinks  the  best  Jewish  minds  are  not  strong  in 
generalization  and  deems  them  clever,  acute  and 
industrious  rather  than  able  in  the  highest  sense. 
On  the  whole,  the  Russo-Jewish  immigration  is 
richer  in  gray  matter  than  any  other  recent 
stream,  and  it  may  be  richer  than  any  large  inflow 
since  the  colonial  era. 

Perhaps  abstractness  is  another  trait  of  the 
Jewish  mind.  To  the  Hebrew  things  present 
themselves  not  softened  by  an  atmosphere  of 
sentiment,  but  with  the  sharp  outlines  of  that 
desert  landscape  in  which  his  ancestors  wan- 


160    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


dered.  As  farmer  he  is  slovenly  and  does  not 
root  in  the  soil  like  the  German.  As  poet  he 
shows  little  feeling  for  nature.  Unlike  the  Ger- 
man artisan  who  becomes  fond  of  what  he  cre- 
ates, the  Jew  does  not  love  the  concrete  for  its 
own  sake.  What  he  cares  for  is  the  value  in  it. 
Hence  he  is  rarely  a  good  artisan,  and  perhaps 
the  reason  why  he  makes  his  craft  a  mere  step- 
ping-stone to  business  is  that  he  does  not  relish 
his  work.  The  Jew  shines  in  literature,  music 
and  acting — the  arts  of  expression — but  not  often 
is  he  an  artist  in  the  manipulation  of  materials. 
In  theology,  law  and  diplomacy — which  involve 
the  abstract — the  Jewish  mind  has  distinguished 
itself  more  than  in  technology  or  the  study  of  na- 
ture. 

The  Jew  has  little  feeling  for  the  particular. 
He  cares  little  for  pets.  He  loves  man  rather 
than  men,  and  from  Isaiah  to  Karl  Marx  he  holds 
the  record  in  projects  of  social  amelioration.  The 
Jew  loves  without  romance  and  fights  without 
hatred.  He  is  loyal  to  his  purposes  rather  than 
to  persons.  He  finds  general  principles  for  what- 
ever he  wants  to  do.  As  circumstances  change 
he  wiU  make  up  with  his  worst  enemy  or  part 
company  with  his  closest  ally.  Hence  his  won- 
derful adaptability.  Flexible  and  rational  the 
Jewish  mind  cannot  be  bound  by  conventions. 
The  good  will  of  a  Southern  gentleman  takes  set 
forms  such  as  courtesy  and  attentions,  while  the 
kindly  Jew  is  ready  with  any  form  of  help  that 
may  be  needed.    So  the  South  looked  askance  at 


THE  EAST  EUEOPEAX  HEBREWS  163 


the  Jews  as  "no  gentlemen."  Nor  have  the  Irish 
with  their  strong  personal  loyalty  or  hostility 
liked  the  Jews.  On  the  other  hand  the  Yankees 
have  for  the  Jews  a  cousinly  feeling.  Puritanism 
was  a  kind  of  Hebraism  and  throve  most  in  the 
parts  of  England  where,  centuries  before,  the 
Jews  had  been  thickest.  "With  his  rationalism, 
his  shrewdness,  his  inquisitiveness  and  acquisi- 
tiveness, the  Yankee  can  meet  the  Jew  on  his  own 
ground. 

Like  all  races  that  survive  the  sepsis  of  civili- 
zation, the  Hebrews  show  great  tenacity  of  pur- 
pose. Their  constancy  has  worn  out  their  perse- 
cutors and  won  them  the  epithet  of  ''stiff- 
necked."  In  their  religious  ideas  our  Jewish 
immigrants  are  so  stubborn  that  the  Protestant 
churches  despair  of  making  proselytes  among 
them.  The  sky-rocket  careers  leading  from  the 
peddler's  pack  to  the  banker's  desk  or  the  pro- 
fessor's chair  testify  to  rare  singleness  of  pur- 
pose. Whatever  his  goal — money,  scholarship, 
or  recognition — the  true  Israelite  never  loses 
sight  of  it,  cannot  be  distracted,  presses  steadily 
on,  and  in  the  end  masters  circumstance  instead 
of  being  dominated  by  it.  As  strikers  the  Jewish 
wage  earners  will  starve  rather  than  yield.  The 
Jewish  reader  in  the  libraries  sticks  indomitably 
to  the  course  of  reading  he  has  entered  on.  Xo 
other  policy  holder  is  so  reliable  as  the  Jew  in 
keeping  up  his  premiums.  The  Jewish  can- 
vasser, bill  collector,  insurance  solicitor,  or  com- 
mercial traveler  takes  no  rebuff,  returns  brazenly 


164    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 

again  and  again,  and  will  risk  being  kicked  down 
stairs  rather  than  lose  his  man.  During  the  Civil 
War  General  Grant  wrote  to  the  war  department 
regarding  the  Jewish  cotton  traders  who  pressed 
into  the  South  vrifh  the  northern  armies:  "I 
have  instructed  the  commanding  officer  to  refuse 
all  permits  to  Jews  to  come  South,  and  I  have 
frequently  had  them  expelled  from  the  depart- 
ment, but  they  come  in  with  their  carpet  sacks  in 
spite  of  all  that  can  be  done  to  prevent  it."  Char- 
ity agents  say  that  although  their  Hebrew  cases 
are  few,  they  cost  them  more  than  other  cases  in 
the  end  because  of  the  unblushing  persistence  of 
the  applicant.  Some  chiefs  of  police  will  not  tol- 
erate the  Hebrew  prostitute  in  their  city  because 
they  find  it  impossible  to  subject  her  to  any  regu- 
lations. 

THE  RACE  LIKE 

In  New  York  the  line  is  drawn  against  the  Jews 
in  hotels,  resorts,  clubs,  and  private  schools,  and 
constantly  this  line  hardens  and  extends.  They 
cry  Bigotry"  but  bigotiy  has  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  What  is  disliked  in  the  Jews  is  not 
their  religion  but  certain  ways  and  manners. 
Moreover,  the  Gentile  resents  being  obliged  to 
engage  in  a  humiliating  and  undignified  scramble 
in  order  to  keep  his  trade  or  his  clients  against 
the  Jewish  invader.  The  line  is  not  yet  rigid,  for 
the  genial  editor  of  Vorivaerts,  Mr.  Abram  Ca- 
han,  tells  me  that  he  and  his  literary  brethren 
from  the  Pale  have  never  encountered  Anti-Sem- 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  165 


itism  in  the  Americans  they  meet.  Not  the 
socialist  Jews  but  the  vulgar  upstart  parvenus 
are  made  to  feel  the  discrimination. 

This  cruel  prejudice — for  all  lump  condemna- 
tions are  cruel — is  no  importation,  no  hang-over 
from  the  past.  It  appears  to  spring  out  of  con- 
temporary experience  and  is  invading  circle  after 
circle  of  broad-minded.  People  who  give  their 
lives  to  befriending  immigrants  shake  their  heads 
over  the  Galician  Hebrews.  It  is  astonishing 
how  much  of  the  sympathy  that  twenty  years  ago 
went  out  to  the  fugitives  from  Russian  massa- 
cres has  turned  sour.  Through  fear  of  retalia- 
tion little  criticism  gets  into  print ;  in  the  open  the 
Philo-semites  have  it  all  their  way.  The  situa- 
tion is:  Honey  above,  gall  beneath.  If  the 
Czar,  by  keeping  up  the  pressure  which  has  al- 
ready rid  him  of  two  million  undesired  subjects, 
should  succeed  in  driving  the  bulk  of  his  six  mil- 
lion Jews  to  the  United  States,  we  shall  see  the 
rise  of  a  Jewish  question  here,  perhaps  riots  and 
anti-Jewish  legislation.  No  doubt  thirty  or 
forty  thousand  Hebrews  from  eastern  Europe 
might  be  absorbed  by  this  country  each  year  with- 
out any  marked  growth  of  race  prejudice;  but 
when  they  come  in  two  or  three  or  even  four  times 
as  fast,  the  lump  outgrows  the  leaven,  and  there 
will  be  trouble. 

America  is  probably  the  strongest  solvent  Jew- 
ish separatism  has  ever  encountered.  It  is  not 
only  that  here  the  Jew  finds  himself  a  free  man 
and  a  citizen.    That  has  occurred  before,  with- 


166    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


out  causing  the  Jew  to  merge  into  the  general 
population.  It  is  that  here  more  than  anywhere 
else  in  the  world  the  future  is  expected  to  be  in 
all  respects  better  than  the  past.  No  civilized 
people  ever  so  belittled  the  past  in  the  face  of  the 
future  as  we  do.  This  is  why  tradition  withers 
and  dies  in  our  air;  and  the  dogma  that  the  Jews 
are  a  peculiar  people"  and  must  shun  intermar- 
riage with  the  Gentiles  is  only  a  tradition.  The 
Jewish  dietary  laws  are  rapidly  going.  In  New 
York  only  one-fourth  of  the  two  hundred  thou- 
sand Jewish  workmen  keep  their  Sabbath  and 
only  one-fifth  of  the  Jews  belong  to  the  syna- 
gogue. The  neglect  of  the  synagogue  is  as 
marked  as  the  falling  away  of  non-Jews  from  the 
church.  Mixed  marriages,  although  by  no  means 
numerous  in  the  centers,  are  on  the  increase,  and 
in  1909  the  Central  Conference  of  Jewish  Eabbis 
resolved  that  such  marriages  ' '  are  contrary  to  the 
tradition  of  the  Jewish  religion  and  should  there- 
fore be  discouraged  by  the  American  Eabbinate. ' ' 
Certainly  every  mixed  marriage  is,  as  one  rabbi 
puts  it,  "a  nail  in  the  cofiSn  of  Judaism,"  and  free 
mixing  would  in  time  end  the  Jews  as  a  distinct 
ethnic  strain. 

The  "hard  shell"  leaders  are  urging  the  Jews 
in  America  to  cherish  their  distinctive  traditions 
and  to  refrain  from  mingling  their  blood  with 
Gentiles.  But  the  liberal  and  radical  leaders  in- 
sist that  in  this  new,  ultra-modem  environment 
nothing  is  gained  by  holding  the  Jews  within  the 
wall  of  Orthodox  Judaism.    As  a  prominent  He- 


THE  EAST  EUROPEAN  HEBREWS  167 


brew  labor  leader  said  to  me:  **By  blending 
with  the  American  the  Jew  will  gain  in  physique, 
and  this  with  its  attendant  participation  in  nor- 
mal labor,  sports,  athletics,  outdoor  life,  and  the 
like,  will  lessen  the  hyper-sensibility  and  the  sen- 
suality of  the  Jew  and  make  him  less  vain,  un- 
scrupulous and  pleasure-loving." 

It  is  too  soon  yet  to  foretell  whether  or  not  this 
vast  and  growing  body  of  Jews  from  eastern  Eu- 
rope is  to  melt  and  disappear  in  the  American 
population  just  as  numbers  of  Portuguese,  Dutch, 
English,  and  French  Jews  in  our  early  days  be- 
came blent  with  the  rest  of  the  people.  In  any 
case  the  immigrant  Jews  are  being  assimilated 
outwardly.  The  long  coat,  side  curls,  beard  and 
fringes,  the  "Wandering  Jew"  figure,  the  furtive 
manner,  the  stoop,  the  hunted  look,  and  the  mar- 
tyr air  disappear  as  if  by  magic  after  a  brief 
taste  of  American  life.  It  would  seem  as  if  the 
experience  of  Russia  and  America  in  assimilating 
the  J ews  is  happily  illustrated  by  the  old  story  of 
the  rivalry  of  the  wind  and  the  sun  in  trying  to 
strip  the  traveler  of  his  cloak. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  LESSEE  IMMIGKANT  GROUPS 

THE  immigration  question  is  a  live  wire  and 
whoever  handles  it  may  look  for  tingling 
surprises.  One  is  a  bit  startled  on  realizing  that 
through  the  "Bravas"  from  the  Cape  Verde  Is- 
lands we  are  getting  a  new  dash  of  black  from  the 
Senegambian  tar-brush.  How  few  are  aware 
that  a  third  of  Sicily,  from  which  so  many  immi- 
grants come,  is  chiefly  Saracen  in  stock,  so  that 
the  heredity  of  the  Bedouin  tribes  of  Mohamet's 
time  is  to  be  blent  with  the  heredity  of  our  pio- 
neering breed!  Who  reflects  that,  with  Chinese 
and  Japanese,  Finns  and  Magyars,  Bulgars  and 
Turks,  about  a  half  a  million  more  or  less  Mon- 
golian in  blood  have  cast  in  their  lot  with  us  and 
will  leave  their  race  stamp  upon  the  American 
people  of  the  future? 

THE  FINNS 

Our  130,000  immigrants  from  Finland  should 
be  counted  to  the  Finno-Tartar  branch  of  the 
Mongolian  race,  although  since  the  dawn  of  his- 
tory the  western  Finns  have  intermingled  with 
the  Swedes  until  their  blondness  and  cast  of  coun- 
tenance bespeak  the  North  European.  Neverthe- 
less, here  and  there  among  the  Finns  one  notices 

168 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  169 


that  inward  and  downward  slant  of  the  eyes  which 
proclaims  the  Asiatic. 

Ever  since  the  heavy  paw  of  the  Russian  bear 
descended  on  Finland,  these  people  have  been 
seeping  into  the  United  States.  They  come  for 
liberty's  sake,  bring  their  families  and  expect  to 
remain.  Lovers  of  wood  and  water,  they  keep  to 
the  North  and  the  Northwest  and  are  willing  to 
tackle  the  roughest  land  in  order  to  become  inde- 
pendent. As  farmers  they  are  thrifty  but,  if  left 
to  themselves,  not  particularly  skillful  or  progres- 
sive. Among  them  survive  Old-World  ways,  such 
as  reaping  by  handfuls  with  a  sickle  and  hauling 
hay  from  the  field  on  a  sleigh.  With  a  sharp  ax 
in  his  hand  the  Finn  turns  artist  and  will  hew  out 
a  log  house  so  beautiful  as  to  put  an  American 
pioneer  to  the  blush.  One  of  the  first  things  he 
builds  is  an  air-tight  bath-house  in  which  he  may 
steam  himself  by  dashing  water  on  hot  stones. 

Practically  all  these  immigrants  are  literate 
and  they  are  eager  patrons  of  night  schools.  In 
acquiring  English  they  are  rather  slow.  Their 
native  ability  is  good,  but  is  not  considered  to  be 
equal  to  that  of  the  Swedes.  They  are  quiet  and 
law-abiding,  but  litigious.  With  his  grim  inten- 
sity of  character  the  Finn  cannot  bear  to  compro- 
mise his  wrongs,  but  insists  on  all  he  thinks  is  due 
him.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  a  man  with  so 
much  iron  in  his  blood  is  honest. 

Like  the  drunken  Magyar  or  Lithuanian  the 
"loaded"  Finn  is  a  terrible  fellow.  Liquor 
seems  to  let  loose  in  him  fell  and  destructive  im- 


170    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


pulses  which  had  been  held  in  the  leash  by  moral 
ideas.  The  immigrants  realize  their  danger  and 
the  total  abstinence  movement  is  very  strong 
amongst  them.  A  rival  current  is  Socialism  for, 
strange  to  say,  thousands  of  Finns,  since  coming 
to  this  country,  have  utterly  lost  faith  in  the  ex- 
isting social  order.  The  mining  company  praises 
the  temperance"  Finns  but  makes  haste  to  get 
rid  of  the  Socialists,  although  they  are  earnest 
people  of  a  peaceable  temper. 

Such  movements  reveal  a  thinking  mood. 
Thanks  to  the  long  struggle  with  Russia,  the  Fin- 
nish mind  is  awake  and  open  to  ideas.  Our  Finns 
have  a  real  thirst  for  education  and,  besides  sup- 
porting the  best  of  public  schools,  they  maintain 
near  Duluth  a  college  of  their  own  of  1,200  stu- 
dents. In  all  their  discussions  the  women  take  an 
equal  share  with  the  men  and,  when  the  North- 
west adopts  equal  suffrage,  the  wives  of  the  Finns 
will  be  among  the  first  to  vote.  The  Finns  are 
prompt  to  acquire  citizenship  and  they  do  not 
abuse  the  ballot.  They  will  not  vote  for  a  fellow 
countiyman  unless  he  is  the  fittest  candidate  for 
the  office. 

Their  civic  attitude  is  revealed  by  an  incident 
that  occurred  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Spanish- 
American  war.  A  community  of  agricultural 
Finns  near  Carlton,  Minnesota,  who  had  settled 
there  in  the  eighties,  came  together  after  the  call 
for  volunteers  and  considered  what  they  ought  to 
do.  After  deliberation  they  concluded  that  in 
token  of  their  gratitude  for  their  good  fortune 


THE  LESSEB  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  173 


under  the  stars  and  stripes  they  ought  to  send  one 
of  their  number  to  the  war.  So  they  picked  out 
as  their  representative  a  stalwart,  comely  farm 
lad  of  twenty-three  and  he  served  through  the  Cu- 
ban campaign  as  Finnish  champion  of  American 
institutions ! 

THE  MAGYAES 

In  the  school  of  Western  civilization  the  Finns 
and  the  Magyars  sit  nearer  the  front  than  any 
other  people  of  Mongol  speech  and  blood.  In 
progressiveness  the  quarter  of  a  million  Magyars 
in  our  midst  are  as  American  as  any  immigrants 
we  receive.  A  thousand  years  ago  the  Magyars, 
invading  from  Asia,  conquered  the  Slavs  in  Hun- 
gary and  settled  down  as  a  dominant  race.  Al- 
though a  minority  in  the  land,  they  have  remained 
masters  and  rulers.  Hence  the  Magyar  immi- 
grant, however  poverty-pinched,  feels  the  con- 
stant prick  of  the  spur  of  race  pride.  His  sense 
of  honor  is  high.  He  will  not  seek  charity  unless 
he  really  needs  it.  In  a  Magyar  quarter  squalor 
and  degeneration  are  not  to  be  seen.  The  grass 
and  flowers  about  the  cottages,  the  clean  yard  and 
the  clean  children  proclaim  the  presence  of  a  race 
that  cannot  bear  to  be  looked  down  on. 

While  the  Magyars  have  been  political  and  mil- 
itary leaders  in  Hungary,  the  masses  are  famil- 
iar with  the  struggle  for  existence.  They  are 
exploited  in  many  ways  by  the  Jews,  who  in  Hun- 
gary have  been  treated  more  liberally  than  any- 
where else  in  Europe.    It  is  not  surprising,  then, 


174    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


that  few  immigrants  land  liere  with  so  little 
money  as  the  Magyars.  Lacking  the  means  to 
acquire  land,  they  are  little  known  in  agri- 
culture. They  go  straight  into  the  industries  and 
four-fifths  of  them  are  to  be  found  in  the  work- 
places of  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  Ohio  and  New 
Jersey.  They  constitute  a  floating  labor  supply 
shifting  constantly  back  and  forth  between  Fiume 
and  New  York.  In  recent  years  four  Magyars 
have  departed  for  every  five  that  arrived. 

Their  illiteracy  is  11.4  per  cent.,  a  better  show- 
ing than  is  made  by  any  immigrants  from  eastern 
or  southern  Europe,  save  their  cousins  the  Finns. 
They  bring  more  industrial  skill  than  the  average 
Slav  and  their  earning  power  is  greater  than  that 
of  most  of  the  Slavic  nationalities.  They  are  loth 
to  remain  renters  and  in  their  endeavor  to  acquire 
a  home  they  will  assume  burdens  heavier  than 
they  can  carry.  Their  race  pride  plays  into  the 
hands  of  the  hurry-up  American  bosses  with  the 
result  that,  more  than  other  immigrants,  the  Mag- 
yars injure  themselves  by  overwork. 

In  the  Magyar  stream  the  men  are  nearly  three 
times  as  numerous  as  the  women  and  two  out  of 
five  of  the  men  have  left  wives  in  the  old  country. 
This  means  boarding-house  life,  shocking  con- 
gestion and  a  rich  harvest  for  saloon  and  bawdy 
house.  The  Pittsburgh  Magyar  who  earns  $1.80 
a  day  will  spend  ten  cents  of  it  for  lodging,  forty 
cents  for  food,  and  thirty  cents  for  beer.  The 
Magyars  are  a  wine-drinking  people  and  the  im- 
migrants come  from  the  farms  and  know  nothing 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  175 


of  the  corrosion  of  cities.  Being  high-spirited, 
however,  they  want  to  become  American  quickly, 
with  the  result  that  often  they  acquire  our  vices 
before  they  acquire  our  virtues.  In  the  mill 
towns  they  learn  to  guzzle  beer,  carouse  and  leave 
their  earnings  with  the  caterers  to  appetite. 

Their  crime  record  is  bad.  No  alien  is  more 
dreaded  by  the  police  than  a  vengeful  or  drink- 
maddened  Magyar.  The  proportion  of  alien 
Magyar  prisoners  who  have  been  committed  for 
murder  is  35.6  per  cent.,  higher  than  of  any  other 
nationality  save  the  Russians.  Their  hot-headed 
and  quarrelsome  disposition  causes  personal  vio- 
lence to  bulk  very  large  in  their  crime.  In  of- 
fenses against  chastity  their  showing  is  bad,  but 
their  bent  for  gainful  crime  is  slight. 

Most  Magyars  come  to  America  with  the  ex- 
pectation of  returning  eventually  to  Hungary  to 
live.  For  this  reason  few  have  acquired  citizen- 
ship and  scarcely  any  immigrants  from  south- 
eastern Europe  show  less  interest  in  the  ballot. 
After  a  trip  or  two  home  and  a  vain  effort  to  set- 
tle down  to  hfe  in  the  old  country,  many  return  to 
America  reconciled  to  the  prospect  of  ending  their 
days  here. 

THE  PORTUGUESE 

Mongrelism  and  social  decay  have  hurt  the 
southwest  of  Europe  even  more  than  the  Turk 
has  hurt  the  southeast.  This  is  why  the  60,000 
Portuguese  in  the  United  States  are,  in  point  of 
culture,  behind  even  the  Servians  and  the  Mace- 


176    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


donians.  In  the  growing  army  of  foreign  born 
illiterates  they  constitute  the  van.  Not  even  the 
Turks,  Syrians  or  East  Indians  can  vie  with  them. 
On  arrival  not  a  third  are  able  to  read  and  write. 
As  we  find  them  in  the  cotton  mills  55  per  cent,  of 
them  cannot  speak  English.  Even  after  ten 
years  or  more  in  our  midst  two  Portuguese  out 
of  five  cannot  manage  the  speech  of  the  coun- 
try. 

There  are  two  centers  of  Portuguese  distribu- 
tion— southeastern  New  England  and  central  Cal- 
ifornia. Cahfomia  has  23,000  Portuguese  immi- 
grants, Massachusetts  26,000,  Ehode  Island  6,000. 
In  Boston  are  1,225,  in  Cambridge  2,000,  in  Prov- 
idence 2,200,  in  Lowell  2,200,  in  New  Bedford 
4,000,  in  Fall  Eiver  14,000.  We  understand  why 
Portuguese  should  settle  in  California  but  what 
brings  these  olive-skinned  people  to  chilly  New 
England  ?  The  answer  takes  us  into  the  realm  of 
Chance.  In  the  beginning  of  a  stream  of  immi- 
gration there  is  often  romance.  Then,  if  ever, 
accident  counts  and  the  venturesome  individual. 
Just  as  a  fallen  tree  on  the  Continental  Divide 
may  turn  certain  snow  waters  from  the  Pacific  to 
the  Gulf,  so  a  practice  of  New  Bedford  whalers 
a  lifetime  ago  caused  the  crowded  Azores  to  over- 
flow into  Massachusetts  instead  of  Brazil.  In  the 
old  days  the  whalers,  after  a  summer  cruise, 
touched  at  the  Azores  and  took  on  each  from  25 
to  35  natives.  When  after  two  or  three  years  of 
whaling  they  returned  to  New  Bedford,  some  of 
these  Azoreans  remained  and  a  settlement  grew 


Roumanian  Couple  in  Gala  Attire,  Youngstown,  O. 


THE  LESSEE  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  179 

up.  To-day  their  quarter  of  New  Bedford, 
known  as  ''Fayal,"  is  very  prosperous. 

All  down  Cape  Cod  these  fishermen  have  well 
nigh  replaced  the  sea-faring  Yankees.  Province- 
town,  the  spot  where  the  Pilgrims  first  landed  and 
which  was  settled  by  the  purest  English,  seems 
to-day  a  South  European  town.  Handsome  dark- 
skinned  Azoreans  man  the  fishing  boats,  Correa, 
Silva,  Cabral,  and  Manta  are  the  names  on  the 
shops  and  the  Roman  Catholics  outnumber  those 
of  any  other  denomination. 

When  the  bottom  fell  out  of  whaling  the  New 
Bedford  Portuguese  went  into  the  cotton  mills 
and  their  countrymen  began  coming  in  larger 
numbers.  Besides  the  "White  Portuguese" 
have  come  in  multitudes  of  ''Black  Portuguese" 
from  the  Cape  Verde  islands.  Three  thousand 
of  them  work  during  the  season  in  the  cranberry 
bogs  of  Massachusetts  and  all  other  pickers  flee 
before  them.  They  are  obviously  negroid,  lack 
foresight  and  are  so  stupid  they  cannot  follow  a 
straight  line. 

The  real  Portuguese  immigrate  in  families  and 
show  very  little  money  on  landing.  At  home  70 
per  cent,  of  them  were  farmers  or  farm  laborers. 
They  know  sea  and  soil  but  bring  no  industrial 
skill.  If  they  cannot  farm  or  fish  they  become 
day  laborers,  mill  hands,  dockers,  teamsters, 
draymen,  stationary  engineers  or  firemen.  Many 
of  their  women  are  in  the  needle  trades. 

In  the  mills  the  Portuguese  do  not  shine.  The 
men  earn  $8.00  a  week,  while  the  rest  of  the  for- 


180    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


eign  born  average  $12.00.  Their  sons  and  daugh- 
ters earn  $9.50,  whereas  the  second  generation  of 
other  immigrants  average  $14.00.  They  put  wife 
and  daughters  into  the  mill  and  stay  out  of  labor 
unions.  In  eight  cases  out  of  nine  they  sleep  three 
or  more  in  a  room.  In  Lowell,  according  to  the 
government  investigator,  "The  standard  of  liv- 
ing of  the  Portuguese,  as  judged  by  the  number 
of  persons  per  apartment,  room  and  sleeping 
room,  is  much  lower  than  that  of  any  other  race. ' ' 

In  Boston,  "Among  the  Portuguese  poverty  is 
greater  and  more  hopeless  than  it  is  among  the 
Jews  and  Italians,  although  there  are  no  Portu- 
guese in  the  almshouses.  Few  of  the  Portuguese 
are  really  well  to  do  while  many  are  partially  de- 
pendent because  the  labor  of  the  women,  who  are 
often  obliged  to  support  the  family,  is  too  unre- 
munerative  to  ensure  their  independence.  Por- 
tuguese women  who  have  shown  their  low  moral 
sense  by  rearing  a  family  of  fatherless  children 
exhibit  their  courage  and  industry  by  sewing 
early  and  late  to  gain  a  meager  living  for  their 
little  ones." 

Although  unskilled,  ignorant  and  segregated, 
the  Portuguese  commit  very  little  crime.  Never- 
theless, their  moral  standard  is  in  some  respects 
exceedingly  low.  Says  Dr.  Bushee:  "The  idea 
of  family  morality  among  them  is  almost  primi- 
tive, resembling  that  of  the  negroes  of  the  South. 
Not  only  are  elopements  made  and  repaid  in  kind 
without  involving  further  complications,  but  also 
what  anthropologists  call  'sexual  hospitality'  is 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  181 


not  unknown  among  tlie  Portuguese."  They 
''are  not  free  from  drunkenness  and  thieving,  but 
these  faults  are  more  carefully  concealed  among 
them  and  fewer  arrests  result  than  would  be  the 
case  with  other  nationalities.  Many  of  the  Por- 
tuguese men  are  idle  and  thriftless,  and  some  of 
the  women  are  suspected  of  having  been  public 
women  in  the  Azore  Islands  from  which  they 
come. ' ' 

In  California  the  Portuguese  live  like  the  Ital- 
ians, but  while  the  Italians  cooperate  in  leasing 
land,  the  Portuguese  are  so  individualistic  that 
they  seldom  rent  or  own  land  in  partnership. 
This  has  handicapped  them  in  agricultural  com- 
petition with  the  Italians  and  the  Japanese. 

Their  interest  in  education  is  of  the  feeblest. 
In  the  mill  towns  the  percentage  of  Portuguese 
children  at  home  is  much  larger  than  that  of  the 
English;  although  in  this  respect  the  showing  of 
the  Fall  River  Poles  is  much  worse.  No  other 
mill  people  have  so  large  a  proportion  of  their 
children  in  the  primary  grades.  The  retardation 
of  Portuguese  school  children  is  high.  In  Cali- 
fornia their  children  are  taken  out  of  school 
early  and  the  few  who  go  on  are  sent  to  business 
college"  rather  than  to  high  school. 

No  immigrants  care  so  little  for  citizenship  as 
the  Portuguese.  Of  the  men  whose  term  of  resi- 
dence entitles  them  to  claim  citizenship  only  3.2 
per  cent,  have  become  naturalized.  At  New  Bed- 
ford only  one  in  twenty  entitled  to  citizenship 
has  sought  it;  whereas,  of  the  other  foreign  born, 


182    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


over  half  have  taken  steps  to  gain  citizenship. 
The  Portuguese  farmers  of  California,  although 
prosperous,  care  nothing  for  public  affairs  and 
not  half  of  them  take  a  newspaper.  They  are  in- 
terested only  in  making  money,  saving,  and  buy- 
ing land. 

Owing  to  their  extreme  clannishness  assimila- 
tion is  slow.  In  the  city  they  live  in  a  quarter  by 
themselves;  in  the  country  they  form  a  colony. 
They  have  their  church  life  apart  and  their  soci- 
eties center  about  their  church.  Although  the 
thriving  farmers  are  improving  their  housing 
and  standard  of  living,  they  are  inclined  to  be 
clannish,  partly  because  Americans  do  not  care 
for  their  society."  The  chief  agents  of  assimi- 
lation are  the  children.  Having  mingled  with 
other  children  in  the  public  schools,  the  young 
people  are  taken  into  fraternal  orders  and  share 
the  social  life  of  the  community.  Moreover,  the 
parents  unconsciously  raise  their  standard  of  liv- 
ing through  their  efforts  to  gratify  the  wants  in- 
spired in  their  children  by  contact  with  school- 
mates coming  from  better  homes.  If  the  second 
generation  are  soon  to  be  segregated  in  parochial 
schools,  as  are  the  children  of  the  Poles  and  the 
French  Canadians,  this  happy  assimilation  of  the 
Portuguese  through  their  children  will  be 
checked. 

THE  GKEEKS 

Practically  all  our  150,000  Greeks  have  joined 
us  in  the  course  of  a  decade  and  a  half.    The  im- 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  183 


migrants  are  mostly  young  men  and  the  propor- 
tion of  females  is  negligible.  Fugitives  from 
oppression  always  bring  their  families;  so  that 
this  stream  almost  without  women  is  the  clearest 
proof  that  the  immigration  from  Hellas  is  purely 
economic.  The  Hellenic  Government  is  demo- 
cratic and  popular,  military  service  is  slight  and 
there  is  no  religious  or  political  oppression. 
What  has  happened  is  that  the  huge  American 
orb  has  swum  within  the  ken  of  a  little  people 
about  as  numerous  as  the  population  of  New  Jer- 
sey and  the  larger  mass  is  exerting  its  solar  at- 
traction. The  peasant  living  on  greens  boiled  in 
olive  oil,  who  eats  meat  three  times  a  year  and 
keeps  without  noticing  it  the  150  fasting  days  in 
the  Greek  calendar,  has  sniffed  the  flesh  pots  of 
America.  Hence  a  wild-fire  exodus  which  has 
devastated  whole  villages  and  threatens  to  deplete 
the  labor  force  of  the  kingdom. 

Says  the  emigrant  when  questioned  as  to  his 
motive:  "It  is  hard  to  make  a  living  here. 
America  is  rich,  I  can  make  more  money  there. 
It  is  the  money."  "Money"  is  the  keynote  of 
Greek  immigration.  Flashy  strangers  have  gone 
about  talking  with  the  peasant  in  his  furrow  and 
the  shepherd  on  the  hillside,  exciting  their 
imagination  as  to  the  wonders  of  America 
and  smoothing  out  the  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  migrating.  In  the  earlier  days  of  the  move- 
ment one  man  made  $50,000  a  year  from  his 
network  of  agencies  selling  tickets  and  advancing 
passage  money  on  a  mortgage.    The  letter  to  the 


184    THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


home  folks,  written  by  the  Greek  who  has  found 
footing  in  Lowell  or  Chicago  and  which  is  read 
by  or  to  every  one  in  the  \'illage,  has  been  seized 
upon  by  money-lenders  and  they  have  lost  no  op- 
portunity to  encourage  both  the  writing  and  the 
wide  circulation  of  such  epistles.  The  result  is 
that,  in  the  words  of  Professor  Fairchild  the  clos- 
est student  of  this  immigration,  "The  whole 
Greek  world  may  be  said  to  be  in  a  fever  of  emi- 
gration. From  the  highlands  and  the  lowlands 
of  the  Morea,  from  Attica,  Thessaly  and  Euboea, 
from  Macedonia,  Asia  Minor  and  the  Islands,  the 
strong  young  men  with  one  accord  are  severing 
home  ties,  leaving  behind  wives  and  sweethearts 
and  thronging  to  the  shores  of  America  in  search 
of  opportunity  and  fortune."  "America  is  a 
household  word  in  almost  every  Greek  family," 
"Greek  immigrants  know  to  just  what  place  in  the 
United  States  they  are  going  and  have  a  very 
definite  idea  of  what  work  they  are  going  to  do." 

Although  there  are  10,000  Greek  mill  hands  in 
Lowell,  there  is  a  strong  tendency  for  the  Greeks 
in  America  to  take  to  certain  lines  of  business, 
such  as  candy-kitchens  and  confectionery  stores, 
ice-cream  parlors,  fruit  carts,  stands  and  stores, 
florist  shops  and  boot-blacking  establishments. 
This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  this  catering  to  the 
minor  wants  of  the  public  admits  of  being  started 
on  the  curb  with  little  capital  and  no  experience. 
Once  his  foot  is  on  the  first  rung,  the  saving  and 
commercial-minded  Greek  climbs.  From  curb  to 
stand,  from  stand  to  store,  from  little  store  to  big 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  187 


store,  to  the  chain  of  stores,  and  to  branch  stores 
in  other  cities — such  are  the  stages  in  his  upward 
path.  As  the  Greeks  prosper,  they  do  not  venture 
out  into  untried  lines,  but  scatter  into  the  smaller 
cities  and  towns  in  order  to  follow  there  the  few 
businesses  in  which  they  have  become  expert. 

If  the  immigration  from  Hellas  keeps  up,  in 
twenty  years  the  Greeks  will  own  the  candy  trade 
of  the  country,  the  soda  fountains  and  perhaps  the 
fruit  business.  Born  epicures  and  cooks  the 
Greeks  are  going  into  the  catering  of  food.  In 
Atlanta  they  have  35  restaurants,  in  St.  Louis  26, 
in  Pittsburgh  25,  in  Birmingham  12  hotels  and  14 
restaurants. 

Although  Greeks  are  very  rarely  farmers,  we 
hear  of  them  as  fruit  raisers  in  California,  miners 
in  Utah,  laborers  on  the  railroads  and  fishers  on 
both  our  coasts.  In  the  cotton  mills  the  Greeks 
are  on  a  level  with  the  more  backward  national- 
ities. They  show  little  mechanical  ability  and 
few  have  reached  responsible  posts.  They  are 
sober  and  amenable  to  discipline,  but  some  em- 
ployers find  them  too  excitable  and  unsteady  to 
be  good  workers. 

The  ugliest  thistle  patch  we  owe  to  Old-World 
seed  is  the  serfdom  of  thousands  of  Greek  boys  in 
the  shoe-shining  parlors  that  have  sprung  up 
everywhere.  In  some  parts  of  Greece  the  peas- 
ant sets  his  children  early  to  work  in  order  that 
their  earnings  may  leave  him  free  to  loaf  the  live- 
long day  in  a  coffee-house.  Upon  them,  too,  he 
saddles  the  burden  of  providing  dowries  for 


188    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


their  sisters.  Accordingly,  in  certain  districts, 
the  poor  send  away  their  boys  to  the  cities  of 
Greece  and  Turkey,  where  they  are  hired  out  to 
peddlers,  grocers  and  restaurant  keepers,  who 
treat  them  badly  and  work  them  unconscionably 
long  hours.  From  such  parents  the  Greek  in 
America  has  no  difficulty  in  recruiting  boys  whom 
he  exploits  under  conditions  that  savor  of  slav- 
ery. 

In  thousands  of  Greek  shoe-shining  shops  are 
working  bound  boys  who  are  miserably  fed  and 
lodged  by  their  masters,  paid  $3.00  or  $4.00  a 
week  and  required  to  turn  over  all  tips.  Often 
the  tips  alone  cover  the  boy's  wages  and  keep,  so 
that  his  labor  costs  the  master  nothing.  Seeing 
that  from  each  boy  the  padrone  makes  from  $100 
to  $200  a  year,  a  chain  of  such  establishments 
yields  him  a  princely  income.  No  wonder  the 
negro  bootblack  and  the  Italian  bootblack  have 
been  forced  to  the  wall. 

The  bound  boys  are  on  duty  15  or  16  hours  a 
day  and  work  every  day  in  the  year.  They  get  in 
their  eating  and  sleeping  as  best  they  can.  They 
know  no  recreation.  Late  at  night,  completely 
exhausted,  they  drop  with  their  clothes  on  into  a 
bed  that  must  suffice  for  four  or  five.  Boys  who 
have  been  in  a  city  several  years  may  learn  noth- 
ing of  it  save  the  shop,  their  living  quarters  and 
the  streets  between.  Since  the  padrone's  game  is 
to  keep  his  boys  dumb  and  blind,  they  are  not  al- 
lowed to  talk  freely  with  Greek  customers.  The 
moment  a  customer  talks  with  a  boy,  ''trusties" 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  189 


crowd  round  to  listpn.  No  truth  can  be  gotten 
from  the  boys  concerning  their  age,  their  work  or 
their  pay.  To  avoid  the  arm  of  the  truant  officer, 
no  Greek  bound  boy  confesses  to  less  than  seven- 
teen years.  They  are  ignorant  of  the  rights  and 
rewards  of  labor  in  this  country  and  are  told  that, 
if  they  leave  their  work,  they  will  be  arrested. 
Even  their  letters  home  are  read  and  censored. 

The  effects  of  this  servitude  on  the  boys  are 
shocking.  They  miss  all  schooling  and  years  may 
elapse  before  they  get  their  eyes  open.  The  study 
of  Enghsh  is  the  first  step  towards  emancipation ; 
but  where  work  is  constant  they  miss  even  this 
chance  and  young  men  will  be  found  who  have 
been  shining  shoes  for  years  and  feel  no  ambition 
for  anytliing  else.  The  physical  ravages  of  such 
work  and  confinement  are  appalling.  In  their 
memorial  to  the  Immigration  Commission  the 
Greek  physicians  of  Chicago  say : 

"Young  immigrants  laboring  in  shoeshining  places 
for  a  period  of  upwards  of  two  years  become  afflicted 
with  chronic  gastritis  and  hepatitis.  These  diseases  un- 
dermine their  constitutions,  so  that  if  they  continue 
longer  at  the  same  work  they  become  afflicted  with  pul- 
monary tuberculosis.  Being  too  ignorant  to  take  pre- 
cautionary measures,  the  disease  is  communicated  to 
others  by  contagion." 

They  go  on  to  ask  the  Government  not  to  allow 
such  bound  boys  to  land. 

Through  this  peep  hole  we  glimpse  one  secret 
of  the  immigrant's  sky-rocket  commercial  rise. 


190    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


Behold  Stephanos,  who  landed  ten  years  ago  with- 
out a  drachma  and  now  draws  a  cool  thousand  a 
month  from  his  business  and  is  one  of  our  solid 
men!  Wonderful!"  exclaims  the  innocent 
American,  "What  stuff  there  must  be  in  him! 
Shows,  too,  that  the  country  is  still  full  of  good 
chances."  The  fact  is  the  worthy  Stephanos  lolls 
on  the  backs  of  a  hundred  unseen  bootblacks  who 
are  being  ruined  that  he  may  prosper.  When  one 
considers  how  mercilessly  the  immigrant  land- 
lord, banker,  saloon  keeper,  contractor  or  employ- 
ment agent  hoodwinks  and  fleeces  his  helpless  fel- 
low countrymen,  certain  of  the  "successes"  one 
hears  of  do  not  seem  so  remarkable  after  all. 

THE  LEVANTINES 

One  hundred  thousand  immigrants  from  Asiatic 
Turkey  introduce  us  to  certain  very  marked  dif- 
ferences between  the  European  civilization  and 
the  Asiatic.  In  general,  these  Syrians,  Armen- 
ians, Arabs  and  Turks  eschew  alcohol,  shun  \^o- 
lence  and  give  little  trouble  to  the  police.  They 
are  thrifty,  acquisitive  and  self  supporting. 
Their  women  folk  are  hedged  and  virtuous.  Their 
native  intelligence  is  beyond  question,  they  re- 
spect learning  and  they  appreciate  educational  op- 
portunities for  their  children. 

On  the  other  hand,  they  tend  to  crowd,  their 
standards  of  cleanliness  are  low  and  they  are 
greatly  afflicted  with  trachoma,  an  excludable  eye 
disease.  Their  narrow  range  of  interests  throws 
out  in  ugly  relief  their  lust  of  gain,  especially  gain 


THE  LESSER  IMMIGRANT  GROUPS  193 


without  sweat.  The  Oriental  attitude  toward  fe- 
males shows  itself  in  a  great  difference  between 
the  sexes  in  illiteracy,  and  in  the  betrothal  of 
young  girls  to  mature  men  whom  they  scarcely 
know.  These  people  love  trade,  particularly  the 
individual  bargain,  which  offers  scope  for  what 
is  amiably  called  "a  contest  of  wits"  but  is  really 
the  ensnaring  of  the  unsuspecting  by  the  spider 
type.  At  a  time  when  our  retail  commerce  has 
happily  come  to  the  one-price"  system,  the  lus- 
trous-eyed peddlers  from  the  Levant  bring  in 
again  the  odious  haggling  trade  with  its  deceit 
and  trickery. 

That  these  immigrants  lack  physical  and  moral 
courage  is  conceded  even  by  their  friends.  They 
do  not  settle  their  quarrels  on  the  spot  face  to  face 
but  revenge  themselves  treacherously  from  be- 
hind when  they  get  a  safe  chance.  Their  feeling 
that  truth  is  a  luxury  not  to  be  brought  out  on 
common  occasions  gives  them  an  advantage  in  a 
commercial  system  which  takes  for  granted  a  good 
deal  of  Anglo-Saxon  straightforwardness.  It 
needs  but  half  an  eye  to  see  that  the  "business 
ability"  attributed  to  the  prospering  dealer  is 
often  nothing  but  the  practice  of  Oriental  craft 
among  the  unsuspicious.  As  the  Romans  found 
these  people  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, so  we  find  them  to-day,  good  looking,  pliant, 
clever,  sometimes  brilliant,  but  shifty  and  wanting 
in  character. 

When  two  peoples  find  that  their  standards  re- 
pel hke  oil  and  water,  they  do  not  care  to  asso- 


194    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


ciate.  Naturally,  then,  the  Oriental  immigrants 
tend  to  huddle  in  colonies  in  which  they  may  live 
in  the  old  way,  keep  their  pride  and  spare  them- 
selves the  pains  of  adjustment  to  American  ideals. 
Not  only  do  such  colonies  check  the  assimilation 
of  those  who  most  need  it,  but  they  are  apt  to  be 
nests  of  congestion,  disease  and  depravity,  as  well 
as  hot-beds  for  the  propagation  of  false  and  im- 
practical ideas  of  political  and  social  freedom. 


CHAPTER  IX 


ECONOMIC  CONSEQUENCES  OF  IMMIGBATIQN 

MORE  and  more  immigration  is  an  economic 
matter,  a  flow  of  men  rather  than  of  fam- 
ilies, seeking  gain  rather  than  religious  and  po- 
litical liberty.  Those  who  bring  anything  but 
their  hands  are  a  very  small  and  diminishing  con- 
tingent. Most  of  the  money  the  immigrant  shows 
on  landing  has  been  supplied  him  for  that  purpose. 
In  1882,  when  the  old  immigration  reached  its 
height,  the  public  domain  was  being  carved  up  at 
a  tremendous  rate,  and  the  home-seeker  predomi- 
nated. When  the  crest  of  the  new  immigration 
arrived,  in  1907,  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  free 
land  was  gone  forever,  and  the  job-seeker  predom- 
inated. Formerly  the  idea  of  wandering  oversea 
sprang  up  naturally  among  the  intelligent  and 
restless ;  now  the  idea  is  sown  broadcast  by  thou- 
sands of  steamship  agents  and  their  runners.  In 
the  tavern,  knee  to  knee  with  the  yokels,  sits  the 
runner,  and  paints  an  El  Dorado.  The  poor  fel- 
lows will  believe  him  if  he  tells  them  the  trees  of 
America  bear  golden  leaves.  When  the  '*  Amer- 
ican fever"  seizes  upon  the  peasant,  it  is  the 
obliging  runner  who  suggests  mortgaging  his  home 
for  the  passage-money  or  who  finds  a  buyer  for  his 
cows. 

195 


196    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Common  laborers  who  have  been  in  America 
are  hired  to  go  about  among  the  peasants,  flash 
money,  clink  glasses,  and  tell  of  the  wonderful 
wages  awaiting  them.  The  decoy  thus  gets  to- 
gether a  group  who  elect  him  leader  and  pay  him 
so  much  per  head  to  guide  them  to  America.  Lit- 
tle do  the  poor  sheep  suspect  that  their  bell-wether 
is  paid  by  the  steamship  agent  for  forming  the 
group  and  by  the  employer  to  whom  he  delivers 
them.  A  forwarding  business  exists  for  sending 
penniless  laborers  to  America  as  if  they  were  com- 
mercial ware.  Each  leaves  at  home  some  relative 
under  bonds  that  the  laborer  will  within  a  year  pay 
a  certain  sum  as  cost  and  profit  of  bringing  him 
here.  Parties,  through-billed  from  their  native 
village  by  a  professional  money-lender,  are  met 
at  the  right  points  by  his  confederates,  coached  in 
three  lessons  on  what  answers  to  make  at  Ellis 
Island,  and  delivered  finally  to  the  Pittsburgh 

boarding-boss,"  or  the  Chicago  saloon-keeper, 
who  is  recruiting  labor  on  commission  for  a  steel 
mill  or  a  construction  gang. 

The  emigration  of  5,000  Rumanian  Jews  be- 
tween January  and  August,  1900,  was  brought 
about  by  steamship  agents,  who  created  great  ex- 
citement in  Rumania  by  distributing  glowing  cir- 
culars about  America.  One  authority  stated  to 
the  Immigration  Commission  that  two  of  the  lead- 
ing steamship  lines  had  five  or  six  thousand  ticket- 
agents  in  Gahcia  alone,  and  that  there  was  "a 
great  hunt  for  emigrants"  there.  Selling  steer- 
age tickets  to  America  is  the  chief  occupation  of 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  197 


large  numbers  of  persons  in  Austria-Hungary, 
Greece  and  Russia,  the  main  sources  of  undesir- 
able aliens.  In  1908  and  1909  the  inflow  and  out- 
flow of  steerage-passengers  through  our  ports 
amounted  to  about  a  million  and  a  half  a  year. 
Allowing  an  average  outlay  of  $50  a  head,  we  have 
a  movement  furnishing  $75,000,000  of  annual  busi- 
ness to  the  foreign  railway  and  steamship  com- 
panies. That  a  monster  of  this  size  grows  dragon 
claws  with  which  to  defend  itself  goes  without  say- 
ing. 

CHEAP  LABOR  A  RAIN  OF  MANNA 

Still,  it  is  not  as  cargo  that  the  immigrant  yields 
his  biggest  dividends.  But  for  him  we  could  not 
have  laid  low  so  many  forests,  dug  up  so  much 
mineral,  set  going  so  many  factories,  or  built  up 
such  an  export  trade  as  we  have.  In  most  of  the 
basic  industries  the  new  immigrants  constitute  at 
least  half  the  labor  force.  Although  millions  have 
come  in,  there  is  no  sign  of  supersaturation,  no 
progressive  growth  of  lack  of  employment. 
Somehow  new  mines  have  been  opened  and  new 
mills  started  fast  enough  to  swallow  them  up. 
Virtually  all  of  them  are  at  work  and,  what  is 
more,  at  work  in  an  efficient  system  under  intelli- 
gent direction.  Ivan  produces  much  more  than 
he  did  at  home,  consumes  more,  and,  above  all, 
makes  more  profit  for  his  employer  than  the 
American  he  displaces.  Thanks  to  him,  we  have 
bigger  outputs,  tonnages,  trade-balances,  for- 
tunes, tips,  and  alimonies ;  also  bigger  slums,  red- 


198    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


light  districts,  breweries,  hospitals,  and  death- 
rates. 

To  the  employer  of  unskilled  labor  this  flow  of 
aliens,  many  of  them  used  to  dirt  floors,  a  vege- 
table diet,  and  child  labor,  and  ignorant  of  under- 
clothing, newspapers,  and  trade  unions,  is  like  a 
rain  of  manna.  For,  as  regards  foreign  competi- 
tors, his  own  position  is  a  Gibraltar.  When  the 
European  sends  his  capital  hither,  he  puts  it  into 
railroad  securities  yielding  from  four  to  seven  per 
cent.,  thereby  releasing  American  capital  for  in- 
vestment in  the  enterprises  that  pay  from  ten  to 
thirty  per  cent.  The  foreign  capitalist  dares  not 
put  up  mill  or  refinery  here,  because  he  cannot 
well  run  such  concerns  at  long  range.  He  may  not 
invade  the  American  market  \\T.th  the  products  of 
his  mill  over  there,  because  our  tariff  has  been 
designed  to  prevent  just  that  thing. 

ENDLESS  INFLOW  OF  THE  NEEDIEST 

Thus,  SO  long  as  he  stays  in  his  home  market, 
the  American  mill-owner  is  shielded  from  foreign 
competition,  while  the  common  labor  he  requires 
is  cheapened  for  him  by  the  endless  inflow  of  the 
neediest  meekest  laborers  to  be  found  within  the 
white  race.  If  in  time  they  become  ambitious  and 
demanding,  there  are  plenty  of  "greenies"  he 
can  use  to  teach  them  a  lesson.  The  "Hunkies" 
pay  their  **bit"  to  the  foreman  for  the  job,  are 
driven  through  the  twelve-hour  day,  and  in  time 
are  scrapped  with  as  little  concern  as  one  throws 
away  a  thread-worn  bolt.    One  steel-mill  superin- 


Sunday  Roumanians,  Youngstown,  O. 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  201 


tendent  received  official  notice  to  hire  no  man  over 
thirty-five  and  keep  no  man  over  forty-five.  A 
plate-mill  which  had  experienced  no  technical  im- 
provement in  ten  years  doubled  its  production  per 
man  by  driving  the  workers.  No  wonder,  then, 
that  in  the  forty  years  the  American  capitalist  has 
had  Aladdin's  lamp  to  rub,  his  profits  from  mill 
and  steel  works,  from  packing-house  and  glass 
factory,  have  created  a  sensational  "prosperity," 
of  which  a  constantly  diminishing  part  leaks 
down  to  the  wage-earners.  Nevertheless,  the  sys- 
tem which  allows  the  manufacturer  to  buy  at  a 
semi-European  wage  much  of  the  labor  that  he 
converts  into  goods  to  sell  at  an  American  price 
has  been  maintained  as  "the  protection  of  Amer- 
ican labor" ! 

THE  KEW  IMMIGBATION  AND  THE  HIGH  COST  OF  LrVTNG 

Between  1900  and  1910,  although  population 
grew  twenty-one  per  cent.,  the  output  of  the  ten 
principal  crops  of  the  country  increased  only  nine 
per  cent.  Between  1899  and  1911  the  value  of  the 
average  acre's  output  of  such  crops  increased 
seventy  per  cent.,  while  its  power  to  purchase  the 
things  the  farmer  buys  was  greater  by  forty-two 
per  cent.  There  has  been  a  general  upheaval  of 
prices,  to  be  sure,  but  the  price  of  farm  produce 
has  risen  much  faster  and  farther  than  the  price 
of  other  commodities.  This  is  "the  high  cost  of 
living,"  and  it  is  immigration  that  has  made  this 
imp  shoot  up  faster  in  the  United  States  than  any- 
where else. 


202    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 

As  long  as  good  land  lasted,  our  Government 
stimulated  agriculture  by  presenting  a  quarter- 
section  to  whoever  would  undertake  to  farm  wild 
land.  This  bounty  overdid  farming,  until,  in  the 
middle  of  the  nineties,  the  cost  of  living  had 
reached  a  minimum.  With  the  ending  of  free 
land,  the  upward  turn  was  bound  to  come,  but  the 
change  was  made  more  dramatic  by  the  inpouring 
of  ten  millions  of  immigrants  without  the  knowl- 
edge, the  means,  or  the  inclination  to  engage  in 
farming.  Among  us  there  is  one  American  white 
farmer  for  fourteen  American  whites,  one  Scan- 
dinavian farmer  for  eight  Scandinavians,  one  Ger- 
man farmer  for  eleven  Germans,  one  Irish  farmer 
for  forty  Irish;  but  it  takes  130  Poles,  Hungar- 
ians, or  Italians  in  this  country  to  furnish  one 
farmer.  Failing  to  contribute  their  due  quota  to 
the  production  of  food,  these  late-comers  have 
ruptured  the  equilibrium  between  field  and  mill, 
and  made  the  high  cost  of  living  a  burning  ques- 
tion. Just  as  the  homestead  policy  overstimu- 
lated  the  growth  of  farms,  the  new  immigration 
has  overstimulated  the  growth  of  factories. 

IMMIGRANTS  AND  AGRICULTUEE 

Nevertheless,  certain  of  the  South  Europeans 
who  are  upon  the  soil  have  something  to  show 
American  farmers  facing  the  problems  of  inten- 
sive agriculture.  Italians  are  teaching  their 
neighbors  how  to  extract  three  crops  a  year  from 
a  soil  already  nourishing  orchard  or  vineyard. 
The  Portuguese  raise  vegetables  in  their  walnut 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  203 


groves,  grow  currants  between  the  rows  of  trees 
in  the  orchard,  and  beans  between  the  currant 
rows.  They  know  how  to  prevent  the  splitting 
of  their  laden  fruit-trees  by  inducing  a  living  brace 
to  grow  between  opposite  branches.  The  black- 
beetle  problem  they  solve  by  planting  tomato  slips 
inclosed  in  paper.  From  the  slopes  looking  out 
on  the  Adriatic  the  Dalmatian  brings  a  horticul- 
tural cunning  which  the  American  fruit-grower 
should  be  eager  to  acquire. 

The  conversion  of  New  Jersey  barrens  into 
berry  farms,  vineyards,  and  pepper  fields,  the  re- 
clamation of  muck  soil  in  western  New  York, 
which  Americans  were  not  willing  to  touch,  the 
transmutation  of  wild  Ozark  lands  into  apples  and 
peaches,  are  Italian  exploits  which  constitute 
clear  gain  for  the  country.  But  there  are  other 
immigrant  farmers  whose  labors  count  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  national  ledger.  Not  a  few  Slav 
colonies  are  clearing  and  tilling  land  so  poor  or 
so  steep  that  it  ought  never  to  have  been  brought 
under  the  plow.  The  soil  they  have  deforested 
will  presently  wash  into  the  rivers,  leaving 
stripped  rocky  slopes  to  grin,  like  a  Death's-head, 
in  the  landscape.  The  nation  will  have  to  pay  for 
it,  just  as  France  paid  for  the  reckless  ax  work 
that  went  on  under  the  First  Republic. 

HELPING  THE  IMMIGKANT  TO  GET  UPON  THE  SOIL 

When  confronted  with  the  undeniable  evils  re- 
sulting from  the  crowding  of  old-world  peasants 
into  American  slums  and  factories,  the  opponents 


204    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


of  restriction  urge  that  the  trouble  is  with  the 
distribution  of  the  immigrants,  there  are  not 
really  too  many  of  them,  but  they  are  congested 
in  certain  centers  and  industries.  Then  let  the 
state  or  the  nation  take  the  immigrant  in  hand 
and  settle  him  upon  the  soil,  where  there  is  room 
for  him  and  where  he  yearns  to  be.  Supply  him 
with  the  best  of  information,  guidance  and  super- 
vision and  lend  him  a  little  money  until  he  has 
gotten  upon  his  feet.  Successful  state  coloniza- 
tion would,  no  doubt,  restore  the  balance  between 
agriculture  and  manufactures  and  prevent  the 
heartbreaking  waste  and  misery  resulting  from 
the  present  hap-hazard,  catch-as-catch-can  distri- 
bution of  immigrants  among  American  opportu- 
nities. 

Two  other  consequences  ought,  however,  to  be 
evident;  First,  the  policy  would  tend  to  use  up 
the  agricultural  opportunities  Americans  may  pre- 
fer to  hold  open  for  their  children  and  grandchil- 
dren. Second,  State  help  to  the  immigrant  would 
furnish  splendid  advertising  matter  to  the  steam- 
ship companies  endeavoring  to  fill  more  steerages 
and  might  soon  swell  the  number  of  arrivals  to 
a  million  and  a  half  or  two  millions  a  year.  If  we 
wish  to  have  more  immigrants  and  to  fill  up  this 
country  in  the  briefest  possible  time,  state  colo- 
nization is  just  the  way  to  go  about  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  once  the  volume  of  immigration  has 
been  brought  under  effective  control,  the  policy 
of  aiding  the  immigrant  to  get  upon  the  land  is 
heartily  to  be  commended. 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  207 


INDUSTRIAL  DISPLACEMENT 

The  facts  assembled  by  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission shatter  the  rosy  theory  that  foreign  labor 
is  drawn  into  an  industry  only  when  native  labor 
is  not  to  be  had.  The  Slavs  and  Magyars  were 
introduced  into  Pennsylvania  forty-odd  years  ago 
by  mine-operators  looking  for  more  tractable 
miners.  Agents  were  sent  abroad  to  gather  up 
labor,  and  frequently  foreigners  were  brought  in 
when  a  strike  was  on.  The  first  instance  seems  to 
have  occurred  in  Drifton  in  1870,  and  resulted  in 
the  importation  of  two  ship-loads  of  Hungarians. 
The  process  of  replacing  the  too-demanding  Amer- 
ican, Welsh,  and  Irish  miners  with  labor  from 
Austria-Hungary  went  on  so  rapidly  that  by  the 
middle  of  the  nineties,  the  change  was  accom- 
plished. In  1904,  during  a  strike  in  the  coal-fields 
near  Birmingham,  Alabama,  many  South  Eu- 
ropeans were  brought  in.  In  1908  *'the  larger 
companies  imported  a  number  of  immigrants," 
so  that  the  strike  was  broken  and  unionism  de- 
stroyed in  that  region.  In  1880,  in  the  first  strike 
in  the  coal-mines  of  Kansas, ' '  the  first  immigrants 
from  Italy  were  brought  into  the  fields  as  strike- 
breakers. ' ' 

Poles  were  introduced  into  South  Cleveland  in 
1882  to  replace  strikers  in  the  wire-mills.  The 
meat-packing  strike  of  1904  in  Chicago  was  broken 
with  trainloads  of  negroes,  Italians  and  Greeks. 
In  1883  the  largest  oil-refining  company  at  Bay- 
onne,  New  Jersey,  "in  order  to  break  the  strike 


208    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 

among  the  Irish  and  American  coopers,  ...  in- 
troduced great  numbers  of  Slovaks,  Ruthenians, 
and  Poles."  In  1887  a  coal-dockers'  strike  was 
broken  with  Magyars,  and  in  1904  striking  boiler- 
makers  were  replaced  by  Poles.  The  striking 
glass-workers  in  1904  were  beaten  by  the  intro- 
duction of  Slovaks,  Italians,  Poles  and  Magyars. 
During  the  1907  strike  in  the  iron-mines  of  north- 
em  Minnesota,  "one  of  the  larger  companies  im- 
ported large  numbers  of  Montenegrins  and  other 
Southeastern  races  as  strike-breakers,  while  a  few 
of  the  smaller  companies  brought  into  the  region 
a  number  of  German- Austrians. "  "One  mining 
company  imported  as  many  as  1300  of  these  strike- 
breakers. ' ' 

The  hejira  of  the  English-speaking  soft-coal 
miners  shows  what  must  happen  when  low-stand- 
ard men  undercut  high-standard  men.  The  min- 
ers of  Pennsylvania  and  West  Virginia,  find- 
ing their  imions  wrecked  and  their  lot  growing 
worse  under  the  floods  of  men  from  southern  and 
eastern  Europe,  migrated  in  great  numbers  to  the 
Middle  West  and  the  Southwest.  But  of  late  the 
coal-fields  of  the  Middle  West  have  been  invaded 
by  multitudes  of  Italians,  Croatians,  Poles,  and 
Lithuanians,  so  that  even  here  American  and 
Americanized  miners  have  their  backs  to  the  wall. 
As  for  the  displaced  trade-unionists  who  sought 
asylum  in  the  mines  of  Oklahoma  and  Kansas,  the 
pouring  in  of  raw  immigrants  has  weakened  their 
bargaining  power,  and  many  have  gone  on  to  make 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  209 


a  last  stand  in  the  mines  of  New  Mexico  and  Colo- 
rado. 

Each  exodus  left  behind  an  inert  element  which 
accepted  the  harder  conditions  that  came  in  with 
the  immigrants,  and  a  strong  element  that  rose  to 
better  posts  in  the  mines  or  in  other  occupations. 
As  for  the  displaced,  the  Iliad  of  their  woes  has 
never  been  sung — the  loss  of  homes,  the  shattering 
of  hopes,  the  untimely  setting  to  work  of  children, 
the  struggle  for  a  new  foothold,  and  the  turning  of 
thousands  of  self-respecting  men  into  day  labor- 
ers, odd-job  men,  down-and-out-ers,  and  "ho- 
boes." 

IMMIGEANTS  AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS 

The  dramatic  unionization  of  the  garment  in- 
dustries in  our  large  cities  has  misled  the  public 
as  to  the  actual  effect  of  recent  immigration  upon 
trade-unions.  The  fact  is  that  the  immigrants 
from  the  backward  parts  of  Europe  tend  to 
weaken,  if  not  to  shatter,  labor  organizations  in 
the  fields  they  enter.  They  arrive  needy  and 
eager  to  get  any  work  at  almost  any  pay.  Hav- 
ing had  no  industrial  experience  in  the  old  coun- 
try, they  lack  the  trade-union  idea.  Without  our 
speech,  and  often  illiterate,  they  are  very  hard  to 
reach  and  to  bring  into  line.  So  far  as  they  are 
transients,  who  are  not  staking  their  future  on 
the  industry,  they  are  loath  to  pay  union  dues  and 
to  run  the  risk  of  having  to  strike.  It  is  true  that 
the  labor  organizer  evangelizes  the  alien  workers 


210    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 

with  his  union  gospel;  but  by  the  time  one  batch 
has  been  welded  into  a  fighting  force,  another 
batch  is  on  his  hands.  His  work,  like  Penelope's 
web,  is  raveled  out  about  as  fast  as  it  is  woven. 
No  wonder  that  in  the  cotton  industry  unionism 
has  been  wrecked,  while,  of  the  iron  miners,  less 
than  two  per  cent,  belong  to  unions.  Li  1901  the 
United  States  Steel  Corporation's  constituent 
companies  signed  agreements  with  two-thirds  of 
their  125,000  workmen,  among  whom  the  English- 
speaking  held  a  dominant  place.  Ten  years  later 
the  company  signed  not  a  single  agreement  with 
its  beaten  mass  of  Slav-Latins.  There  was  no 
union  with  which  to  sign.  The  organizing,  organ- 
izable  Americans  had  been  deleted  from  the 
works.  No  wonder  that  organized  labor  demands 
restriction  of  immigration.  While  the  inrush  con- 
tinues, the  lines  of  labor  will  be  weak,  forming, 
breaking,  and  reforming  in  the  face  of  the  in- 
trenchments  of  capital. 

IMMIGRANTS  AND  WAGES 

During  the  last  fifteen  years  the  flood  of  gold 
has  brought  in  a  spring-tide  of  prices.  Since  1896 
the  retail  cost  to  Americans  of  their  fifteen  prin- 
cipal articles  of  food  has  risen  seventy  per  cent. 
Wages  should  have  risen  in  like  degree  if  the 
workman  is  to  retain  his  old  standard,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  keeping  his  place  in  a  social  procession 
which  is  continually  mounting  to  higher  economic 
levels.  We  know  that  by  1907  wages  had  risen 
twenty-eight  per  cent.,  while  retail  prices  were 


Cabin  of  an  Austrian  Iron  Miner,  Virginia,  Minn. 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  213 


rising  twenty-six  per  cent.  Evidently  the  work- 
ing man  was  falling  behind  in  the  social  proces- 
sion. In  the  soft-coal  field  of  Pennsylvania, 
where  the  Slav  dominates,  the  coal-worker  re- 
ceives forty-two  cents  a  day  less  than  the  coal- 
worker  in  the  mines  of  the  Middle  West  and  South- 
west, where  he  does  not  dominate.  In  meat-pack- 
ing, iron  and  steel,  cotton  manufacture,  and  other 
foreignized  industries  the  inertia  of  wages  has 
been  very  marked.  The  presence  of  the  immi- 
grant has  prevented  a  wage  advance  which  other- 
wise must  have  occurred. 

What  a  college  man  saw  in  a  copper-mine  in  the 
Southwest  gives  in  a  nutshell  the  logic  of  low 
wages. 

The  American  miners,  getting  $2.75  a  day,  are 
abruptly  displaced  without  a  strike  by  a  train- 
load  of  five  hundred  raw  Italians  brought  in  by 
the  company  and  put  to  work  at  from  $1.50  to  $2 
a  day.  For  the  Americans  there  is  nothing  to  do 
but  to  *  *  go  down  the  road. ' '  At  first  the  Italians 
live  on  bread  and  beer,  never  wash,  wear  the  same 
filthy  clothes  night  and  day,  and  are  despised. 
After  two  or  three  years  they  want  to  live  better, 
wear  decent  clothes,  and  be  respected.  They  ask 
for  more  wages,  the  bosses  bring  in  another  train- 
load  from  the  steerage,  and  the  partly  American- 
ized Italians  follow  the  American  miners  "down 
the  road."  No  wonder  that  the  estimate  of  gov- 
ernment experts  as  to  the  number  of  our  floating 
casual  laborers  ranges  up  to  five  millions ! 


214    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


IMMIGRANTS  AND  CONDITIONS  OF  WORK 

"The  best  we  get  in  the  mill  now  is  greenhorns," 
said  the  superintendent  of  a  tube  mill.  **When 
they  first  come,  they  put  their  heart  into  it  and 
give  a  full  day's  work.  But  after  a  while  they  be- 
gin to  shirk  and  do  as  little  as  they  dare. "  It  is 
during  this  early  innocence  that  the  immigrant  ac- 
cepts conditions  he  ought  to  spurn.  This  same 
mill  had  to  break  up  the  practice  of  selling  jobs 
by  foremen.  In  one  concern  the  boss  who  sold  a 
job  would  dismiss  the  man  after  a  fortnight  and 
sell  the  job  again,  while  another  boss  in  the  same 
works  would  take  on  the  dismissed  man  for  a  fee. 
On  the  Great  Northern  Railroad  the  bosses 
mulcted  each  Greek  laborer  a  dollar  a  month  for 
"interpreter."  The  "bird  of  passage,"  who 
comes  here  to  get  ahead  rather  than  to  live,  not 
only  accepts  the  seven-day  week  and  the  twelve- 
hour  day,  but  often  demands  them.  Big  earnings 
blind  him  to  the  physiological  cost  of  overwork. 
It  is  the  American  or  the  half-Americanized  for- 
eigner who  rebels  against  the  eighty-four-hour 
schedule. 

When  capital  plays  lord  of  the  manor,  the  Old 
World  furnishes  the  serfs.  In  some  coal  districts 
of  West  Virginia  the  land,  streets,  paths,  roads, 
the  miners'  cabins,  the  store,  the  school,  and  the 
church  are  all  owned  and  controlled  by  the  coal 
company.  The  company  pays  the  teacher,  and  no 
priest  or  clergyman  objectionable  to  it  may  re- 
main on  its  domain.    One  may  not  step  off  the 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  215 


railroad's  right  of  way,  pass  through  the  streets, 
visit  mine  or  cabin,  without  permission.  There 
is  no  place  where  miners  meeting  to  discuss  their 
grievances  may  not  be  dispersed  as  trespassers. 
Any  miner  who  talks  against  his  boss  or  complains 
of  conditions  is  promptly  dismissed,  and  ejected 
from  the  35,000  acres  of  company  land.  Hired 
sluggers,  known  as  the  ' '  wrecking-gang, ' '  beat  up 
or  even  murder  the  organizer  who  tries  to  reach 
the  miners.  No  saloon,  gambling-hall,  or  bawdy- 
house  is  tolerated  on  company  land.  Even  the 
beer  wagon  may  not  deliver  beer  at  houses  to 
which  the  superintendent  objects. 

It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  miners  are  all 
negroes  or  foreigners. 

IS  THE  FOREIGNER  INDISPENSABLE? 

After  an  industry  has  been  foreignized,  the  no- 
tion becomes  fixed  in  the  minds  of  the  bosses  that 
without  the  immigrants  the  industry  would  come 
to  a  standstill. 

**If  is  wasn't  for  the  Slavs,"  say  the  superin- 
tendents of  the  Mesaba  Mines,  *'we  couldn't  get 
out  this  ore  at  all,  and  Pittsburgh  would  be  smoke- 
less. You  can't  get  an  American  to  work  here  un- 
less he  runs  a  locomotive  or  a  steam-shovel. 
We 've  tried  it ;  brought  'em  in,  carloads  at  a 
time,  and  they  left." 

"Wouldn't  they  stay  for  three  dollars  a  day?" 
I  suggested,  ven  if  two  dollars  and  ten  cents 
is  n't  enough?" 

"No,  it 's  not  a  matter  of  pay.  Somehow 


216    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Americans  nowadays  aren't  any  good  for  hard 
or  dirty  work." 

Hard  work !  And  I  think  of  Americans  I  have 
seen  in  that  last  asylum  of  the  native  born,  the 
Far  West,  slaving  with  ax  and  hook,  hemng  logs 
for  a  cabin,  ripping  out  boulders  for  a  road,  dig- 
ging irrigation-ditches,  drilling  the  granite,  or 
timbering  the  drift — Americans  shying  at  open- 
pit,  steam-shovel  mining! 

The  secret  is  that  with  the  insweep  of  the  un- 
intelligible bunk-house  foreigner  there  grows  up 
a  driving  and  cursing  of  labor  which  no  self-re- 
specting American  will  endure.  Nor  can  he  bear 
to  be  despised  as  the  foreigner  is.  It  is  not  the 
work  or  the  pay  that  he  minds,  but  the  stigma. 
This  is  why,  when  a  labor  force  has  come  to  be 
mostly  Slav,  it  will  soon  be  all  Slav.  But  if  the 
supply  of  raw  Slavs  were  cut  otf,  the  standards 
and  status  of  the  laborers  would  rise,  and  the 
Americans  would  come  into  the  industry. 

Some  bosses  argue  for  a  continuous  supply  of 
green  foreigners  because  the  sons  of  the  immi- 
grants are  above  their  fathers'  jobs."  A 
strange  industry  this!  Britaui's  iron  industry  is 
manned  by  Britons,  Germany's  by  Germans,  but 
we  are  to  believe  that  America's  iron  industry  is 
an  exotic  which  can  attract  neither  native  Ameri- 
cans nor  the  sons  of  immigrants.  The  truth  is 
that  the  school  and  other  civilizing  agencies  have 
turned  Michael's  boy  not  against  hard  work,  but 
against  the  contempt  with  which  his  father's  kind 


Photograph  by  Townsend.   Courtesy  of  The  Survey 

Polish  Girls  Washing  Dishes  under  the  Sidewalk  in  a  Chicago 
Restaurant.    Tlie  only  Light  is  Artificial 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  219 


of  work  is  tainted.  But  for  the  endless  stream 
of  transients  with  their  pigsty  mode  of  life,  their 
brawls  and  their  animal  pleasures,  the  stigma  on 
the  work  would  vanish,  and  the  son  of  the  immi- 
grant would  be  willing  to  inherit  his  father's  job. 

IMMIGRANT  WOMEN  DOING  MEN'S  WORK 

While  milHons  of  women  are  being  drawn  from 
the  home  into  industry,  the  popular  ideal  of 
womanhood  serves  as  a  precious  safeguard,  turn- 
ing them  away  from  coarsening  occupations  which 
might  rob  them  of  health  or  youth  or  refinement. 
But  this  ideal,  which  is  higher  among  the  Amer- 
ican working-men  than  among  the  workers  of  any 
other  people,  is  menaced  by  the  new  immigrants, 
with  their  peasant  notions  of  womanhood.  The 
Slavs  and  the  Italians  are  not  in  the  least  queasy 
about  putting  their  women  into  heavy  and  dirty 
work,  such  as  core-making,  glass-grinding,  and 
hide-scraping,  which  self-respecting  American 
girls  will  not  touch.  The  employer  realizes  this, 
and  continually  tries  these  women  in  male  occu-  . 
pations,  with  the  object  of  substituting  them  for 
men,  beating  down  men's  wages  or  breaking  a 
men's  strike.  Engaging  in  such  masculine  work 
not  only  prevents  immigrant  women  from  rising 
to  the  American  woman's  sense  of  self-respect, 
but  it  hinders  their  men  from  developing  the 
American  man's  spirit  of  chivalry.  What  is 
more,  the  extension  of  woman's  sphere  on  the 
wrong  side  undermines  the  native  standard  of 


220    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


■womanliness,  so  that  native  girls  are  perhaps  be- 
ing drawn  into  work  that  denies  them  refinement 
and  romance. 

WHAT  BECOirES  OF  DISPLACED  AMEEICAXS 

Does  the  man  the  immigrant  displaces  rise  or 
sink?  The  theory  that  the  immigrant  pushes  him 
up  is  not  without  some  color  of  truth.  In  Cleve- 
land the  American,  German,  and  Bohemian  iron- 
mill  workers  displaced  within  the  last  fifteen  years 
seem  to  have  been  reabsorbed  into  other  growing 
industries.  They  are  engineers  and  firemen, 
bricklayers,  carpenters,  slaters,  structural  iron- 
workers, steam-fitters,  plumbers  and  printers. 
Leaving  pick  and  wheelbarrow  to  Italian  and 
Slav,  the  Irish  are  now  meter-readers,  wire- 
stringers,  conductors,  motormen,  porters,  jani- 
tors, caretakers,  night-watchmen,  and  elevator- 
men.  I  find  no  sign  that  either  the  dis- 
placed workman  or  his  sons  have  suffered 
from  the  advent  of  Pole  and  Magyar.  Some  may 
have  migrated,  but  certainly  those  left  have  easier 
work  and  better  pay.  It  is  as  though  the  alien 
tide  had  passed  beneath  them  and  lifted  them  up. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  Pittsburgh  and  vicinity  the 
new  immigration  has  been  like  a  flood  sweeping 
away  the  jobs,  homes,  and  standards  of  great  num- 
bers, and  obliging  them  to  save  themselves  by  ac- 
cepting poorer  occupations  or  fleeing  to  the  West. 
The  cause  of  the  difference  is  that  Pittsburgh  held 
to  the  basic  industries,  while  in  Cleveland  numer- 
ous high-grade  manufactures  started  up  which  ab- 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  221 


sorbed  the  displaced  workmen  into  the  upper  part 
of  their  labor  force. 

OUR  STANDAED  OF  LIVING  CRUMBLES 

.Unless  there  is  some  such  collateral  growth  of 
skill-demanding  industries,  the  new  immigrants 
bring  disaster  to  many  of  the  working-men  they 
undercut.  The  expansion  of  the  industry  will 
create  some  good  jobs,  but  not  enough  to  reabsorb 
the  Americans  displaced.  Thus  in  the  iron-ore- 
mines  of  Minnesota,  out  of  seventy-five  men  kept 
busy  by  one  steam-shovel,  only  thirteen  get  $2.50 
a  day  or  more,  and  $2.50  is  the  least  that  will  main- 
tain a  family  on  the  American  standard.  It  is 
plain  that  the  advent  of  sixty-two  cheap  immi- 
grants might  displace  sixty-two  Americans  or 
Irish,  while  the  setting  up  of  an  additional  steam 
shovel  would  create  only  thirteen  decent-wage 
jobs  for  them.  Scarcely  any  industry  can  grow 
fast  enough  to  reabsorb  into  skilled  or  semi- 
skilled positions  the  displaced  workmen. 

Employers  observe  a  tendency  for  employment 
to  become  more  fluctuating  and  seasonal  because 
of  access  to  an  elastic  supply  of  aliens,  without 
family  or  local  attachments,  ready  to  go  anywhere 
or  do  anything.  In  certain  centers,  immigrant 
laborers  form,  as  it  were,  visible  living  pools  from 
which  the  employer  can  dip  as  he  needs.  Why 
should  he  smooth  out  his  work  evenly  through  the 
year  in  order  to  keep  a  labor  force  composed  of 
family  men  with  local  roots  when  he  can  always 
take  on  * '  ginnies ' '  without  trouble  and  drop  them 


222    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


without  compunction?  Railroad  shops  are  com- 
ing to  hire  and  to  ''fire"  men  as  they  need  them 
instead  of  relying  on  the  experienced  regular  em- 
ployees. In  a  concern  with  30,000  employees,  the 
rate  of  change  is  a  hundred  per  cent,  a  year,  and 
is  increasing!  Labor  leaders  notice  that  employ- 
ment is  becoming  more  fluctuating,  there  are  fewer 
steady  jobs,  and  the  proportion  of  men  who  are 
justified  in  founding  a  home  constantly  di- 
minishes. 

IMMIGRATION  AND  CRISES 

The  fact  that  during  an  acute  industrial  de- 
pression in  this  country  the  immigrant  stream  not 
only  runs  low,  but  the  departures  may  exceed  the 
arrivals  (as  in  the  eight  months  following  the 
1907  panic,  when  there  was  a  decrease  of  124,124 
in  our  alien  population),  has  been  made  the 
foundation  for  the  argument  that  surplus  im- 
migrant labor,  by  promptly  taking  itself  off  when 
times  are  bad  here,  relieves  the  labor  market  and 
hastens  the  return  to  normal  conditions.  It  is 
overlooked  that  only  the  prosperous  go,  leaving 
upon  us  the  burden  of  the  weak  unemployed 
aliens.  Moreover,  at  the  first  sign  of  returning 
prosperity,  a  freshet  of  immigrants  starts  up, 
thereby  checking  sharply  the  good-times  tendency 
toward  higher  wages  and  better  working  condi- 
tions. 

THE  RISE  OF  SOCIAL  PRESSURE 

Free  land,  coupled  with  high  individual  eflB- 
ciency,  has  made  this  country  a  low-pressure  area. 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  225 


It  ought  to  remain  such,  because  individualistic 
democracy  forbids  a  blind  animal-like  increase  of 
numbers.  By  causing  the  population  to  accom- 
modate itself  to  opportunities,  our  democracy 
solves  the  Sphinx's  riddle  and  opens  a  bright 
prospect  of  continuous  social  progress.  But  of 
late  that  prospect  has  been  clouded.  The  stream- 
ing in  from  the  backward  lands  is  sensibly  convert- 
ing this  country  from  a  low-pressure  area  into  a 
high-pressure  area.  It  is  nearly  a  generation  since 
the  stress,  registered  in  the  labor-market,  caused 
the  British  working-man  to  fight  shy  of  America. 
It  is  twenty  years  since  it  reached  the  point  at 
which  the  German  working-man,  already  on  the 
up-grade  at  home,  ceased  to  be  drawn  to  America. 
As  the  saturation  of  our  labor-market  by  cheaper 
and  ever  cheaper  human  beings  raises  the  pres- 
sure-gage, we  fail  to  attract  as  of  yore  such  peo- 
ples as  the  North  Italians  and  the  Magyars. 

In  1898  few  came  to  us  from  east  of  Hungary. 
Now  we  are  receiving  them  from  Asiatic  Turkey, 
Circassia,  Syria,  and  Arabia.  An  immigration 
has  started  up  from  Persia,  and  conditions  are 
ripe  for  a  heavy  influx  from  western  Asia.  These 
remote  regions,  which  have  had  only  twilight  from 
Europe's  forenoon,  are  high-pressure  areas. 
Their  peoples  are  too  many  in  relation  to  the  op- 
portunities they  know  how  to  use.  Until  educa- 
tion, democratic  ideas,  and  the  elevation  of  women 
restrict  their  increase,  or  machine  industry  widens 
their  opportunities,  these  regions  will  continue  to 
produce  a  surplus  of  people,  which  the  enterpris- 


226    THE  OLD  WORLD  IX  THE  NEW 


ing  avarice  of  steamsliip  companies  will  make  ever 
more  mobile  and  more  threatening  to  the  wage- 
earners  of  an  advanced  country.  Only  lately 
comes  the  announcement  that  one  of  the  trans-At- 
lantic lines  is  about  to  run  its  steamships  through 
the  Dardanelles  and  Bosphorus  into  Black  Sea 
ports  in  order  to  bring  immigrants  direct  to 
America  from  southeastern  Europe  without  the 
expense  of  the  long  haul  overland  to  Hamburg. 

If  an  air-chamber  be  successively  connected  by 
pipes  with  a  large  number  of  tanks  of  compressed 
air,  the  pressure  within  the  chamber  must  rise. 
Similarly,  if  a  low-pressure  society  be  connected 
by  cheap  steam-transportation  with  several  high- 
pressure  societies,  and  allows  them  freely  to  dis- 
charge into  it  their  surplus  population,  the  pres- 
sure in  that  society  must  rise.  But  for  Chinese 
exclusion  we  should  by  this  time  have  six  or  eight 
million  Celestials  in  the  far  "West,  and  mud  vil- 
lages and  bamboo  huts  would  fill  the  noble  valleys 
of  California.  Something  like  this  must  occur 
as  we  go  on  draining  away  surplus  people  from 
larger  and  larger  areas  of  high-pressure. 

Immigration  raises  the  pressure-gage  at  once 
for  laborers,  but  only  gradually  for  other  classes. 
It  is  the  children  of  the  immigrants  who  commu- 
nicate the  pressure  to  all  social  levels.  The  in- 
vestor, landowner,  or  contractor  profits  by  the 
coming  in  of  bare-handed  men,  and  can  well  afford 
to  preach  world-wide  brotherhood.  The  profes- 
sional man,  sitting  secure  above  the  arena  of 
struggle,  can  nobly  rebuke  narrowness  and  race 


CONSEQUENCES  ECONOMIC  227 


hatred.  Throughout  our  comfortable  classes  one 
finds  high-sounding  humanitarianism  and  facile 
lip-sympathy  for  immigrants  coexisting  with 
heartless  indifference  to  what  depressive  immigra- 
tion is  doing  and  will  do  to  American  wage-earn- 
ers and  their  children.  If  the  stream  of  immigra- 
tion included  capitalists  with  funds,  merchants 
ready  to  invade  all  lines  of  business,  lawyers,  doc- 
tors, engineers,  and  professors  qualified  to  com- 
pete immediately  with  our  professional  men,  even 
judges  and  officials  able  to  lure  votes  away  from 
our  own  candidates  for  office,  the  pressure  would 
be  felt  all  along  the  line,  and  there  might  be  some- 
thing heroic  in  these  groups  standing  for  the  equal 
right  of  all  races  to  American  opportunities. 
But  since  actually  the  brunt  is  borne  by  labor,  it 
is  easy  for  the  shielded  to  indulge  in  generous 
views  on  the  subject  of  immigration. 


CHAPTER  X 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION 

THERE  is  a  certain  anthracite  town  of  26,- 
000  inJiabitants  in  which  are  writ  large  the 
moral  and  social  consequences  of  injecting  10,000 
sixteenth-century  people  into  a  twentieth-century 
community.  By  their  presence  the  foreigners 
necessarily  lower  the  general  plane  of  intelhgence, 
self-restraint,  refinement,  orderliness,  and  efl&- 
eiency.  With  them,  of  course,  comes  an  increase 
of  drink  and  of  the  crimes  from  drink.  The  great 
excess  of  men  among  them  leads  to  sexual  im- 
morality and  the  diffusion  of  private  diseases.  A 
primitive  midwifery  is  practised,  and  the  igno- 
rance of  the  poor  mothers  fills  the  cemetery  with 
tiny  graves.  The  women  go  about  their  homes 
barefoot,  and  their  rooms  and  clothing  reek  with 
the  odors  of  cooking  and  uneleanliness.  The 
standards  of  modesty  are  EUzabethan.  The 
miners  bathe  in  the  kitchen  before  the  females  and 
children  of  the  household,  and  women  soon  to  be- 
come mothers  appear  in  pubHc  unconcerned.  The 
foreigners  attend  church  regularly,  but  their  noisy 
amusements  banish  the  quiet  Sunday.  The  for- 
eign men,  three-eighths  of  whom  are  illiterate, 
pride  themselves  on  their  physical  strength  rather 

228 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION  229 


than  on  their  skill,  and  are  willing  to  take  jobs 
requiring  nothing  but  brawn. 

Barriers  of  speech,  education,  and  religious 
faith  split  the  people  into  unsympathetic,  even 
hostile  camps.  The  worst  element  in  the  commu- 
nity makes  use  of  the  ignorance  and  venality  of 
the  foreign-bom  voters  to  exclude  the  better  citi- 
zens from  any  share  in  the  control  of  local  affairs. 
In  this  babel  no  newspaper  becomes  strong  enough 
to  mold  and  lead  public  opinion.  On  account  of 
the  smallness  of  the  English-reading  public, — 
the  native  born  men  number  slightly  over  two 
thousand  and  those  of  American  parentage  less 
than  a  thousand — the  single  English  daily  has  so 
few  subscribers  that  it  cannot  afford  to  offend 
any  of  them  by  exposing  municipal  rottenness. 
The  chance  to  prey  on  the  ignorant  foreigner 
tempts  the  cupidity  and  corrupts  the  ethics  of 
local  business  and  professional  men.  The  Slavic 
thirst,  multiplying  saloons  up  to  one  for  every 
twenty-six  families,  is  communicated  to  Ameri- 
cans, and  results  in  an  increase  of  liquor  crimes 
among  all  classes.  In  like  manner  familiarity 
with  the  immodesties  of  the  foreigners  coarsens 
the  native-bom. 

With  the  basest  Americans  and  the  lowest  for- 
eigners united  by  thirst  and  greed,  while  the  de- 
cent Americans  and  the  decent  foreigners  under- 
stand one  another  too  little  for  team-work,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  the  municipal  government  is 
poor  and  that  the  taxpayers  are  robbed.  Only  a 
few  of  the  main  streets  are  paved;  the  rest  are 


230    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


muddy  and  poorly  guttered.  Outside  the  central 
portion  of  the  city  one  meets  with  open  sewage, 
garbage,  dung-heaps,  and  foul  odors.  Sidewalks 
are  lacking  or  in  bad  repair.  The  police  force, 
composed  of  four  Lithuanians,  two  Poles,  one  Ger- 
man, and  one  Irishman,  is  so  inefficient  that ' '  pis- 
tol-toting" after  nightfall  is  common  among  all 
classes.  At  times  hold-ups  have  been  so  frequent 
that  it  was  not  considered  safe  for  a  well-dressed 
person  to  show  himself  in  the  foreign  sections 
after  dark.  In  the  words  of  a  prominent  local 
criminal  la\vyer : 

We  have  a  police  force  that  can't  speak  English. 
Within  the  last  few  years  there  have  been  six  un- 
avenged murders  in  this  town.  Why,  if  there  were 
anybody  I  wanted  to  get  rid  of,  I'd  entice  him  here, 
shoot  him  down  in  the  street,  and  then  go  around  and 
say  good-by  to  the  police. 

Here  in  a  nutshell  are  presented  the  social  ef- 
fects that  naturally  follow  the  introduction  into 
an  advanced  people  of  great  numbers  of  backward 
immigrants.  One  need  not  question  the  funda- 
mental worth  of  the  immigrants  or  their  possi- 
bilities in  order  to  argue  that  they  must  act  as  a 
drag  on  the  social  progress  of  the  nation  that  in- 
corporates them. 

ILLITERACY 

Among  us  there  are  now  two  million  foreign- 
bom  illiterates,  while  the  number  of  foreign-born 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  231 


men  of  voting  age  unable  to  read  and  write  has 
passed  the  million  mark.  The  confessed  illiteracy 
of  the  multitudes  coming  from  southern  and 
eastern  Europe  is  35.8  per  cent,  as  against  2.7 
per  cent,  for  the  dwindling  streams  from  the 
North  and  West.  We  know  that  the  actual  state 
is  somewhat  worse  than  these  figures  indicate, 
because  many  unlettered  aliens  fearing  rejection 
falsely  declare  themselves  able  to  read  and  write. 
If  the  lands  of  ignorance  continue  to  discharge 
unhindered  their  surplus  into  our  country,  we 
must  resign  ourselves  to  having  numbers  of  fellow- 
citizens  who,  in  the  words  of  the  Commissioner 
of  Immigration  at  New  York,  ''do  not  know  the 
days  of  the  week,  the  months  of  the  year,  their 
own  ages,  or  the  name  of  any  country  in  Europe 
outside  their  own."  Or,  as  another  official  puts 
it: 

In  our  daily  official  duties  we  come  to  know  as  be- 
longing to  a  normal  human  adult  type  the  individual 
who  cannot  count  to  twenty  every  time  correctly;  who 
can  tell  the  simi  of  two  and  two,  but  not  of  nine  and  six ; 
name  the  days  of  the  week,  but  not  the  months  of  the 
year;  who  knows  that  he  has  arrived  at  New  York  or 
Boston,  as  the  case  may  be,  but  does  not  know  the  route 
he  followed  from  his  home  or  how  long  it  took  to  reach 
here;  who  says  he  is  destined  to  America,  but  has  to 
rely  on  showing  a  written  address  for  further  particu- 
lars; who  swears  he  paid  his  own  passage,  but  is  un- 
able to  tell  what  it  cost,  and  at  the  same  time  shows  an 
order  for  railroad  transportation  to  destination  prepaid 
in  this  country. 


232    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


While  sister  countries  are  fast  nearing  the  goal 
of  complete  adult  literacy,  deteriorating  immigra- 
tion makes  it  very  hard  to  lift  the  plane  of  popu- 
lar intelligence  in  the  United  States.  The  foreign- 
born  between  twenty  and  thirty-four  years  of  age, 
late-comers  of  course,  show  five  times  the  illiteracy 
of  native  whites  of  the  same  age.  But  those 
above  forty-five  years  of  age,  mostly  earlier  immi- 
grants, have  scarcely  twice  the  illiteracy  of  native 
whites  above  forty-five.  This  shows  how  much 
wider  is  the  gulf  between  the  Americans  of  to-day 
and  the  new  immigrants  than  that  between  the 
Americans  of  a  generation  ago  and  the  old  immi- 
grants. 

Thanks  to  extraordinary  educational  efforts,  the 
illiteracy  of  native  white  voters  dropped  a  third 
during  the  last  decade ;  that  is,  from  4.9  per  cent, 
to  3.5  per  cent.  But  the  illiteracy  of  the  foreign- 
bom  men  rose  to  12  per  cent. ;  so  that  the  propor- 
tion of  white  men  in  this  country  unable  to  read 
and  write  any  language  declined  only  9  per  cent, 
when,  but  for  the  influx  of  illiterates,  it  would  have 
fallen  30  per  cent. 

In  the  despatches  of  August  16,  1912,  is  an  ac- 
count of  a  gathering  of  ten  thousand  afflicted  peo- 
ple at"  a  shrine  at  Carey,  Ohio,  reputed  to  possess 
a  miraculous  healing  virtue.  Special  trains 
brought  together  multitudes  of  credulous,  and  at 
least  one  "miracle"  was  reported.  As  this  coun- 
try fills  up  with  the  densely  ignorant,  there  will  be 
more  of  this  sort  of  thing.  The  characteristic 
features  of  the  Middle  Ages  may  be  expected  to 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  233 


appear  among  us  to  the  degree  tliat  our  popula- 
tion comes  to  be  composed  of  persons  at  tlie 
medieval  level  of  culture. 

YELLOW  JOUBNALISM 

In  accounting  for  yellow  journalism,  no  one 
seems  to  have  noticed  that  the  saffron  newspapers 
are  aimed  at  a  sub- American  mind  groping  its  way 
out  of  a  fog.  The  scare-heads,  red  and  green  ink, 
pictures,  words  of  one  syllable,  gong  effects,  and 
appeal  to  the  primitive  emotions,  are  apt  to  jar 
upon  the  home-bred  farmer  or  mechanic.  "After 
all,"  he  reflects,  *'I  am  not  a  child."  Since  its 
success  in  the  great  cities,  this  style  of  newspaper 
has  been  tried  everywhere;  but  it  appears  there 
are  soils  in  which  the  "yellows"  will  not  thrive. 
When  a  population  is  sixty  per  cent.  American 
stock,  the  editor  who  takes  for  granted  some  intel- 
ligence in  his  readers  outlasts  the  howling  der- 
vish. But  when  the  native  stock  falls  below  thirty 
per  cent,  and  the  foreign  element  exceeds  it,  yel- 
lowness tends  to  become  endemic.  False  sim- 
plicity, distortion,  and  crude  emotionalism  are 
the  resources  of  newspapers  striving  to  reach  and 
interest  undeveloped  minds.  But  the  arts  that 
win  the  immigrant  deprave  the  taste  of  native 
readers  and  lower  the  intelligence  of  the  commu- 
nity. 

PEONAGE 

The  friendless,  exploitable  alien  by  his  presence 
tends  to  corrupt  our  laws  and  practices  respecting 
labor.    In  1908  the  House  of  Eepresentatives  di- 


234    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


rected  the  Immigration  Commission  to  report  on 
the  treatment  and  conditions  of  work  of  immi- 
grants in  certain  Southern  States  ''and  other 
States."  The  last  phrase  was  introduced  merely 
to  avoid  the  appearance  of  sectionalism,  for  no 
congressman  dreamed  that  peonage  existed  any- 
where save  in  the  South.  The  investigation  dis- 
closed, however,  the  startling  fact  that  immigrant 
peonage  exists  in  every  State  but  Oklahoma  and 
Connecticut.  In  the  West  the  commission  found 
''many  cases  of  involuntary  servitude,"  but  no 
prosecutions.  It  was  in  the  lumber-camps  of 
Maine  that  the  commission  found  "the  most  com- 
plete system  of  peonage  in  the  country. ' ' 

CASTE  SPIRIT 

The  desire  to  cure  certain  ills  has  been  slow  to 
develop  among  us  because  the  victims  are  aliens 
who,  we  imagine,  don't  mind  it  very  much.  On 
learning  that  the  low  pay  of  the  Itahan  navy  for- 
bids meat,  we  recall  that  all  Italians  prefer  maca- 
roni, anyhow.  With  downtrodden  immigrants 
we  do  not  sympathize  as  we  would  with  down- 
trodden Americans.  The  foreign-born  laborers 
are  "wops"  and  don't  count;  the  others  are 
"white  men."  After  a  great  mine  disaster  a 
Pittsburgh  newspaper  posted  the  bulletin: 
"Four  hundred  miners  killed.  Fifteen  Amer- 
icans." Of  late  a  great  split  has  opened  between 
the  American  and  Americanized  working-men  and 
the  foreigners,  with  their  new  sense  of  being  ex- 
ploited and  despised.    The  break  shows  itself  sen- 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  235 


sationally  in  the  bitter  fight  between  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  and  the  Industrial  Workers 
of  the  World.  The  former  denounces  the  red- 
flag  methods  of  the  latter,  ignores  I.  W.  W.  strikes, 
and  allows  its  members  to  become  strike-breakers. 
When  the  latter  precipitates  a  strike  in  some  in- 
dustry in  which  the  Federationists  are  numerous, 
we  shall  see  an  unprecedented  warfare  between 
native  and  foreign  groups  of  working-men.  It 
is  significant  of  the  coming  cleavage  that  the 
mother  of  the  I.  W.  W.,  the  Western  Federation 
of  Miners,  at  once  the  most  American  and  the  most 
radical  of  the  great  labor-unions,  has  disowned 
the  daughter  organization  since  its  leaders  sought 
to  rally  inflammable  and  irresponsible  immigrants 
with  the  fierce  cry,  * '  Sabotage.    No  Truce. ' ' 

THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

Perhaps  the  most  sensitive  index  of  moral  ad- 
vancement is  the  position  assigned  to  woman. 
Never  is  there  a  genuine  advance  that  does  not 
leave  her  more  planet  and  less  satellite.  Until 
recently  nowhere  else  in  the  world  did  women  en- 
joy the  freedom  and  encouragement  they  received 
in  America.  It  is  folly,  however,  to  suppose  that 
their  lot  will  not  be  affected  by  the  presence  of 
six  millions  from  belated  Europe  and  from  Asia, 
where  consideration  for  the  weaker  sex  is  cer- 
tainly not  greater  than  that  of  the  English  before 
the  Puritan  Reformation. 

With  most  of  our  Slavic  nationahties,  it  is  said, 
the  boy  may  strike  his  sister  with  impunity,  but 


236    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


the  girl  who  strikes  her  brother  is  likely  to  be  chas- 
tised. Few  of  the  later  immigrants  think  of  giv- 
ing the  daughter  as  good  a  chance  as  the  son. 
Among  the  American  students  in  our  colleges 
there  are  three  young  men  to  one  young  woman. 
For  the  native  students  of  foreign  fathers  the 
ratio  is  four  to  one,  and  for  the  foreign-bom  eight 
to  one. 

The  Italians  keep  their  daughters  close,  and 
marry  them  off  very  early.  In  the  1909 
strike  of  the  New  York  shirt-waist  makers, 
all  the  nationalities  responded  to  the  union 
ideal  save  the  Italian  girls.  More  than  that, 
hundreds  of  them  slipped  into  the  strikers'  jobs. 
Mystified  by  the  strange,  stolid  resistance  of  the 
brown-eyed  girls  to  all  entreaties,  the  strike- 
leaders  visited  their  homes.  There  they  found 
that  the  Italian  woman,  instead  of  being  a  free 
moral  agent,  is  absolutely  subject  to  the  will  of 
her  nearest  male  relative,  and  the  man  would  not 
take  the  wife,  sister,  or  daughter  out  of  the  shop 
miless  he  was  well  paid  for  it. 

East  European  peasants  are  brutal  in  the  as- 
sertion of  marital  rights,  so  when  the  poor  im- 
migrant woman,  noticing  the  lot  of  the  American 
wife,  comes  to  the  point  of  rebelling  against  the 
overlarge  family,  she  runs  the  risk  of  rough  treat- 
ment. Some  nationalities  are  almost  Oriental  in 
the  way  they  seclude  their  women.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  the  Euthenian,  Polish,  Portuguese, 
South  Italian,  and  Greek  female  employees  who 
have  lived  here  from  five  to  ten  years  are  further 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  237 


behind  their  men-folk  in  speaking  English  than 
the  women  from  northern  and  western  Eu- 
rope. 

That  the  woman's  movement  in  America  is  to 
meet  with  hard  sledding  cannot  be  doubted.  The 
yielding  conservatism  of  our  East  has  been  but- 
tressed of  late  by  the  incorporation  of  millions 
of  immigrants  bred  in  the  coarse  peasant 
philosophy  of  sex.  It  may  be  long  before  women 
win  in  the  East  the  recognition  they  have  won  in 
the  more  American  parts  of  the  country.  Re- 
cently the  school  board  of  New  York,  on  motion  of 
Commissioner  Abraham  Stern,  refused  even  to 
allow  discussion  of  a  woman  teacher's  petition 
for  a  year's  leave  of  absence  without  pay  in  order 
to  have  a  baby.  This  moved  "The  Independent," 
which  has  been  a  Mark  Tapley  on  the  immigra- 
tion question,  to  remark:  "The  wave  of  recent  • 
immigration  has  brought  with  it  the  Oriental  con- 
ception of  woman's  status.  A  man  whose  reli- 
gion requires  him  every  morning  to  thank  God 
that  he  was  not  born  a  woman  is  likely  to  treat 
women  so  that  they  will  wish  they  had  been  born 
men.  We  must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
in  the  future  the  Christian  conception  of  woman- 
hood is  not  to  be  maintained  in  this  country  with- 
out a  struggle." 

THE  SOCIAL  EVIL 

From  a  half  to  three-fifths  of  the  immigration  of 
the  period  1868-88  was  male,  but  the  new  immigra- 
tion shows  a  male  preponderance  of  about  three 


238    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


to  one.  Among  those  from  Austria  there  are  155 
males  to  100  females.  Among  those  from  Hun- 
gary the  proportion  is  161  to  100 ;  from  Italy,  191 ; 
from  Asiatic  Turkey,  210 ;  from  European  Turkey, 
769 ;  from  the  Balkan  States,  1107 ;  from  Greece, 
1192.  A  quarter  of  the  Polish  husbands  in  in- 
dustry, a  third  of  the  married  Slovak  and  Italian 
men,  nearly  half  of  the  Magyars  and  Russians, 
three-fifths  of  the  Croatians,  three-fourths  of  the 
Greeks  and  Rumanians,  and  nine-tenths  of  the 
Bulgarians,  have  left  their  wives  in  the  old  coun- 
try! 

Two  million  more  immigrant  men  than  immi- 
grant women  1  Can  any  one  ask  what  this  leads 
to?  In  colonial  times  the  consequences  of  split- 
family  immigration  were  so  bad  that  Massachu- 
setts and  Connecticut  passed  laws  requiring 
spouses  to  return  to  their  mates  in  England  unless 
they  were  "come  over  to  make  way  for  their  fam- 
ilies." We  are  broader-minded,  and  will  inter- 
fere with  nothing  that  does  not  wound  prosper- 
ity. The  testimony  of  foreign  consuls  and 
leaders  among  the  foreign-born  leaves  no  doubt 
that  in  some  instances  the  woman  cook  of  the 
immigrant  boarding-house  is  common  to  the  in- 
mates. 

HOUSING 

In  the  South  Side  of  Pittsburgh  there  are  streets 
lined  with  the  decent  homes  of  German  steel- 
workers.  A  glance  down  the  paved  passage  lead- 
ing to  the  rear  of  the  house  reveals  absolute  clean- 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGKATION  239 


liness,  and  four  times  out  of  five  one  glimpses  a 
tree,  a  flower  garden,  an  arbor,  or  a  mass  of  vines. 
In  Wood's  Eun,  a  few  miles  away,  one  finds  the 
Slavic  laborers  of  the  Pressed  Steel  Car  Company 
huddled  in  dilapidated  rented  dwellings  so  noi- 
some and  repulsive  that  one  must  visit  the  lower 
quarters  of  Canton  to  meet  their  like.  One  cause 
of  the  difference  is  that  the  Slavs  are  largely  tran- 
sients, who  do  nothing  to  house  themselves  be- 
cause they  are  saving  in  order  to  return  to  their 
native  village. 

The  fact  that  a  growing  proportion  of  our  im- 
migrants, having  left  families  behind  them,  form 
no  strong  local  attachments  and  have  no  desire  to 
build  homes  here  is  one  reason  why  of  late  the 
housing  problem  has  become  acute  in  American 
industrial  centers. 

OVERGROWTH  OF  CITIES 

Not  least  among  the  multiplying  symptoms  of 
social  ill  health  in  this  country  is  the  undue  growth 
of  cities.  A  million  city-dwellers  create  ten  times 
the  amount  of  "problem^'  presented  by  a  million 
on  the  farms.  Now,  as  one  traverses  the  gamut 
that  leads  from  farms  to  towns,  from  towns  to 
cities,  and  from  little  cities  to  big,  the  proportion 
of  American  stock  steadily  diminishes  while  the 
foreign  stock  increases  its  representation  until 
in  the  great  cities  it  constitutes  nearly  three- 
fourths  of  the  population.  In  1910  the  percent- 
age distribution  of  our  white  population  was  as 
follows : — 


240    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


NATIVE 

WHITE 

FOREIGN 

FOREIGN- 

STOCK 

STOCK 

BORN 

.  64.1 

20.8 

7.5 

Cities  2,500—10,000 

57.5 

34.5 

13.9 

Cities  10,000—25,000 

50.4 

42. 

14.4 

Cities  25,000—100,000  . . 

. .  45.9 

46.7 

20.2 

Cities  100,000—500,000  . 

. .  38.9 

53.4 

22.1 

Cities  500,000  and  over  . 

. .  25.6 

70.8 

33.6 

It  is  not  that  the  immigrants  love  streets  and 
crowds.  Two-thirds  of  them  are  farm  bred,  but 
they  are  dropped  down  in  cities,  and  they  find  it 
easier  to  herd  there  with  their  fellows  than  to 
make  their  way  into  the  open  country.  Our  cities 
would  be  fewer  and  smaller  had  they  fed  on  noth- 
ing but  country-bred  Americans.  The  later  alien 
influx  has  rushed  us  into  the  thick  of  urban  prob- 
lems, and  these  are  gravest  where  Americans  are 
fewest.  Congestion,  misliving,  segregation,  cor- 
ruption, and  confusion  are  seen  in  motley  groups 
like  Pittsburgh,  Jersey  City,  Paterson,  and 
Fall  River  rather  than  in  native  centers  like 
Indianapolis,  Columbus,  Nashville,  and  Los 
Angeles. 

PAUPEEISM 

Ten  years  ago  two-fifths  of  the  paupers  in  our 
almshouses  were  foreign-bom,  but  most  of  them 
had  come  over  in  the  old  careless  days  when  we 
allowed  European  poorhouses  to  send  us  their  in- 
mates. Now  that  our  authorities  turn  back  such 
as  appear  likely  to  become  a  public  charge,  the 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION  243 


obvious  pauper  is  not  entering  this  country.  We 
know  that  virtually  every  Greek  in  America  is  self- 
supporting.  The  Syrians  are  said  to  be  sin- 
gularly independent.  The  Slavs  and  the  Magyars 
are  sturdy  in  spirit,  and  the  numerous  indigent 
Hebrews  are  for  the  most  part  cared  for  by  their 
own  race. 

Nevertheless,  dispensers  of  charity  agree  that 
many  South  Italians  are  landing  with  the  most 
extravagant  ideas  of  what  is  coming  to  them. 
They  apply  at  once  for  relief  with  the  air,  *'Here 
we  are.  Now  what  are  you  going  to  do  for  us?" 
They  even  insist  on  relief  as  a  right.  At  home 
it  had  been  noised  about  that  in  foolish  America 
baskets  of  food  are  actually  sent  in  to  the  needy, 
and  some  are  coming  over  expressly  to  obtain  such 
largess.  Probably  none  are  so  infected  with 
spiritual  hookworm  as  the  immigrants  from  Na- 
ples. It  will  be  recalled  that  when  Garibaldi  and 
his  thousand  were  fighting  to  break  the  Bourbon 
tyranny  in  the  South,  the  Neapolitans  would  hur- 
rah for  them,  but  would  not  even  care  for  the 
wounded. 

Says  the  Forty-seventh  Annual  Report  of  the 
New  York  Juvenile  Asylum: 

It  is  remarkable  that  recently  arrived  immigrants 
who  display  small  adaptability  in  American  standards 
are  by  no  means  slow  in  learning  about  this  and  other 
institutions  where  they  may  safely  leave  their  children 
to  be  fed,  clothed,  and  cared  for  at  the  public  expense. 
This  is  one  of  the  inducements  which  led  them  to  leave 
their  native  land. 


244    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Charity  experts  are  very  pessimistic  as  to  what 
we  shall  see  when  those  who  come  in  their  youth 
have  passed  their  prime  and  met  the  cumulative 
effects  of  overwork,  city  life,  drink,  and  vice. 
Still  darker  are  their  forebodings  for  a  second 
generation,  reared  too  often  by  ignorant,  avari- 
cious rustics  lodging  in  damp  cellars,  sleeping  with 
their  windows  shut,  and  living  on  the  bad,  cheap 
food  of  cities.  Of  the  Italians  in  Boston  Dr. 
Bushee  writes: 

They  show  the  beginnings  of  a  degenerate  class,  such 
as  has  been  fully  developed  among  the  Irish.  ...  If 
allowed  to  continue  in  unwholesome  conditions,  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  next  generation  will  bring  forth  a  large 
crop  of  dependents,  delinquents  and  defectives  to  fill 
up  our  public  institutions. 

Says  a  charity  superintendent  working  in  a  huge 
Polish  quarter: 

It  is  the  second  generation  that  will  give  us  trouble. 
The  parents  come  with  rugged  peasant  health,  and  many 
of  them  keep  their  strength  even  in  the  slum.  But  their 
children  often  start  life  weakened  physically  and  men- 
tall}^  by  the  conditions  under  which  they  were  reared. 
They  have  been  raised  in  close,  unsanitary  quarters, 
in  overlarge  families,  by  parents  who  drunk  up  or  saved 
too  much,  spent  too  little  on  the  children,  or  worked  them 
too  soon.  Their  sole  salvation  is  the  open  country,  and 
they  can't  be  pushed  into  the  country.  All  of  us  are 
aghast  at  the  weak  fiber  of  the  second  generation. 
Every  year  I  see  the  morass  of  helpless  poverty  getting 
bigger.  The  evil  harvest  of  past  mistakes  is  ripening, 
but  it  will  take  twenty  years  before  we  see  the  worst 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  245 


of  it.  If  immigration  were  cut  off  short  to-day,  the  bur- 
den from  past  neglect  and  exploitation  would  go  on 
increasing  for  years. 

THE  WAYWAED  CHILD  OF  THE  IMMIGEANT 

In  1908  nine-tenths  of  the  2600  complaints  of 
children  going  wrong  made  to  the  Juvenile  Pro- 
tective Association  of  Chicago  related  to  the  chil- 
dren of  immigrants.  It  is  said  that  four-fifths  of 
the  youths  brought  before  the  Juvenile  Court  of 
Chicago  come  from  the  homes  of  the  foreign- 
born.  In  Pittsburgh  the  proportion  is  at  least 
two-thirds.  However  startling  these  signs  of 
moral  breakdown  in  the  families  of  the  new  immi- 
grants, there  is  nothing  mysterious  about  it.  The 
lower  the  state  from  which  the  alien  comes,  the 
more  of  a  grotesque  he  will  appear  in  the  shrewd 
eyes  of  his  partly  Americanized  children.  ' '  Obe- 
dience to  parents  seems  to  be  dying  out  among  the 
Jews,"  says  a  Boston  charity  visitor.  "The 
children  feel  it  is  n't  necessary  to  obey  a  mother 
who  wears  a  shawl  or  a  father  who  wears  a  full 
beard."  ''Sometimes  it  is  the  young  daughter 
who  rules  the  Jewish  family,"  observes  a  Pitts- 
burgh settlement  head,  "because  she  alone  knows 
what  is  'American.'  But  see  how  this  results  in 
a  great  number  of  Jewish  girls  going  astray. 
Since  the  mother  continues  to  shave  her  head  and 
wear  a  wig  as  she  did  in  Poland,  the  daughter  as- 
sumes that  mother  is  equally  old-fogyish  when  she 
insists  that  a  nice  girl  doesn't  paint  her  face  or 
run  with  boys  in  the  evening." 


246    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Through  their  knowledge  of  our  speech  and 
ways,  the  children  have  a  great  advantage  in  their 
efforts  to  slip  the  parental  leash.  The  bad  boy 
tells  his  father  that  whipping  "doesn't  go"  in 
this  country.  Reversing  the  natural  order,  the 
child  becomes  the  fount  of  knowledge,  and  the 
parents  hang  on  the  lips  of  their  precocious  off- 
spring. If  the  policeman  inquires  about  some 
escapade  or  the  truant  officer  gives  warning,  it  is 
the  scamp  himself  who  must  interpret  between 
parent  and  officer.  The  immigrant  is  braced  by 
certain  Old- World  loyalties,  but  his  child  may 
grow  up  loyal  to  nothing  whatever,  a  rank  egoist 
and  an  incorrigible  who  will  give  us  vast  trouble 
before  we  are  done  with  him. 

Still,  the  child  is  not  always  to  blame.  Often 
the  homes  are  so  crowded  and  dirty,"  says  a  pro- 
bation officer,  *'that  no  boy  can  go  right.  The 
Slavs  save  so  greedily  that  their  children  become 
disgusted  with  the  wretched  home  conditions  and 
sleep  out."  One  hears  of  foreign-born  with  sev- 
eral boarders  sending  their  children  out  to  beg  or 
to  steal  coal.  In  one  city  investigation  showed 
that  only  a  third  of  the  Italian  children  taken 
from  school  on  their  fourteenth  birthday  were 
needed  as  bread-winners.  Their  parents  thought 
only  of  the  sixty  cents  a  week.  In  another  only 
one-fourteenth  of  the  Italian  school  children  are 
above  the  primary  grades,  and  one-eleventh  of 
the  Slavic,  as  against  two-fiifths  of  the  American 
school  children  in  grammar  grades  or  high  school. 
Miss  Addams  tells  of  a  young  man  from  the  south 


Dependent  Slovak  Family,  Cleveland 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION  249 


of  Italy  who  was  mouniing  the  death  of  his  little 
girl  of  twelve.  In  his  grief  he  said  quite  simply : 
**She  was  my  oldest  kid.  In  two  years  she  would 
have  supported  me,  and  now  I  shall  have  to  work 
five  or  six  years  longer  until  the  next  one  can  do 
it."  He  expected  to  retire  permanently  at  the 
age  of  thirty-four. 

INSANITY  AMONG  THE  FOREIGN-BORN 

Not  only  do  the  foreign-bom  appear  to  be  more 
subject  to  insanity  than  the  native-born,  but  when 
insane  they  are  more  likely  to  become  a  pubUc 
charge.  Of  the  asylum  population  they  appear 
to  constitute  about  a  third.  In  New  York  during 
the  year  ending  September  30,  1911,  4218  patients 
who  were  immigrants  or  of  immigrant  parents 
were  admitted  to  the  insane  hospitals  of  the  State. 
This  is  three-quarters  of  the  melancholy  intake 
for  that  year.  Only  one  out  of  nine  of  the  first 
admissions  from  New  York  City  was  of  native 
stock.  The  New  York  State  Hospital  Commis- 
sion declares  that  "the  frequency  of  insanity  in 
our  foreign  population  is  2.19  times  greater  than 
in  those  of  native  birth."  In  New  York  City  it 
"is  2.48  times  that  of  the  native-bom." 

Excessive  insanity  is  probably  a  part  of  the 
price  the  foreign-born  pay  for  the  opportunities 
of  a  strange  and  stimulating  environment,  with 
greater  strains  than  some  of  them  are  able  to 
bear.  America  calls  forth  powerful  reactions  in 
these  people.  Here  they  feel  themselves  in  the 
grasp  of  giant  forces  they  can  neither  withstand 


250    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


nor  comprehend.  The  i^assions  and  the  exer- 
tions, the  hopes  and  the  fears,  the  exultations  and 
the  despairs,  America  excites  in  the  immigrant 
are  likely  to  be  intenser  than  anything  he  would 
have  experienced  in  his  natal  village. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  every  year  New  York 
cares  for  15,000  foreign-bom  insane  at  a  cost  of 
$3,500,000  and  that  the  State's  sad  harvest  of  de- 
mented immigrants  during  the  single  year  1911 
will  cost  about  $8,000,000  before  they  die  or  are 
discharged,  there  is  some  offset  to  be  made  to  the 
profits  drawn  from  the  immigrants  by  the  trans- 
porting companies,  landlords,  real-estate  men, 
employers,  contractors,  brewers,  and  liquor-deal- 
ers of  the  State.  Besides,  there  is  the  cost  of  the 
paupers  and  the  law-breakers  of  foreign  origin. 
All  such  burdens,  however,  since  they  fall  upon 
the  public  at  large,  do  not  detract  from  or  qualify 
that  private  or  business-man's  prosperity  which 
it  is  the  office  of  the  true  modern  statesman  to 
promote. 

IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  SEPABATE  SCHOOL 

In  a  polyglot  mining  town  of  Minnesota  is  a 
superintendent  who  has  made  the  public  school  a 
bigger  factor  in  Americanization  than  I  have 
found  it  anywhere  else.  The  law  gives  him 
the  children  until  they  are  sixteen,  and  he  holds 
them  all.  His  school  buildings  are  civic  and  so- 
cial centers.  Through  the  winter,  in  his  high 
school  auditorium,  which  seats  1200  persons,  he 
gives  a  course  of  entertainment  which  is  self-sup- 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGEATION  251 


porting,  although  his  "talent"  for  a  single  even- 
ing cost  as  much  as  $200.  By  means  of  the 
400  foreigners  in  his  night  schools  he  has  a  grip 
on  the  voters  which  his  foes  have  learned  to 
dread.  Under  his  lead  the  community  has  broken 
the  mine-boss  collar  and  won  real  self-govern- 
ment. The  people  trust  him  and  bring  him  their 
troubles.  He  has  jurisdiction  over  everything 
that  can  atfect  the  children  of  the  town,  and  his 
conception  is  wide.  Wielding  both  legal  and 
moral  authority,  he  is,  as  it  were,  a  corporation 
president  and  a  medieval  bishop  rolled  into  one. 

This  man  sets  no  limit  to  the  transforming 
power  of  the  public  school.  He  insists  that  the 
right  sort  of  schooling  will  not  only  alter  the  ex- 
pression, but  will  even  change  the  shape  of  the 
skull  and  the  bony  formation  of  the  face.  In  his 
office  is  a  beautiful  tabouret  made  by  a  "wild 
boy"  within  a  year  after  he  had  been  brought  in 
kicking  and  screaming.  He  scotfs  at  the  fear  of 
a  lack  of  patriotism  in  the  foreign-born  or  their 
children.  He  knows  just  how  to  create  the  senti- 
ment. He  has  flag  drills  and  special  programs, 
and  in  the  Fourth  of  July  parade  and  the  Decora- 
tion day  procession  the  schools  have  always  a  fine 
float.  He  declares  he  can  build  human  beings  to 
order,  and  will  not  woriy  about  immigration  so 
long  as  the  public  school  is  given  a  chance  at  the 
second  generation. 

But  is  the  public  school  to  have  this  cha.nce? 

Multitudes  of  the  new  immigrants  adhere  to 
churches  which  do  not  believe  in  the  public 


252    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


schools.  "Their  pupils,"  observed  a  priest  to 
me,  **are  like  wild  children."  Said  a  bishop: 
**No  branches  can  be  safely  taught  divorced  from 
religion.  We  believe  that  geography,  history, 
and  even  language  ought  to  be  presented  from  our 
point  of  view."  Hence  with  great  rapidity  the 
children  of  Roman  Catholics  are  being  drawn 
apart  into  parochial  schools.  In  Cleveland  one- 
third  of  the  population  is  supposed  to  be  Catholic, 
and  the  27,500  pupils  in  the  parochial  schools  are 
nearly  one-third  of  all  school  children.  In  Chi- 
cago there  are  112,000  in  the  parish  schools  to 
300,000  in  the  public  schools.  In  New  York  the 
proportion  is  about  one-sixth.  In  twenty-eight 
leading  American  cities  the  attendance  of  the  par- 
ish schools  increased  sixty  per  cent,  between  1897 
and  1910,  as  against  an  increase  of  from  forty-five 
to  fifty  per  cent,  in  the  attendance  of  the  public 
schools.  The  total  number  of  children  in  the  pa- 
rochial schools  is  about  1,400,000.  Separate  ed- 
ucation is  a  settled  Catholic  policy,  and  the  bish- 
ops say  they  expect  to  enroll  finally  the  children 
of  all  their  people. 

To  bring  this  about,  the  public  schools  are  de- 
nounced from  the  pulpit  as  "Godless"  and  "im- 
moral," their  product  as  mannerless  and  disobe- 
dient. "We  think,"  says  a  Slovak  leader,  "that 
the  parochial  school  pupils  are  more  pious,  more 
respectful  toward  parents  and  toward  all  persons 
in  authority."  The  Polish,  Lithuanian,  or 
Slovak  priest,  less  often  the  German  or  Bohe- 
mian, says  bluntly:    "If  you  send  your  children 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION  253 


to  the  public  school,  they  Mall  go  to  hell. ' '  Some- 
times the  priest  threatens  to  exclude  from  the 
confessional  parents  who  send  their  children  to 
the  public  school.  An  archbishop  recently  de- 
creed that  parents  who  without  permission  send 
their  children  to  the  public  school  after  they  have 
made  their  first  communion  ''commit  a  grievous 
sin  and  cannot  receive  the  sacraments  of  the 
church."  Within  the  immigrant  groups  there  is 
active  opposition,  but  it  appears  to  be  futile.  In 
the  soft-coal  mining  communities  of  Pennsylvania 
9  per  cent,  of  the  children  of  native  white  paren- 
tage attend  the  parochial  schools,  whereas  24  per 
cent,  of  the  Polish  children  and  48  per  cent,  of 
the  Slovak  children  are  in  these  schools.  In 
a  certain  district  in  Chicago  where  the  public- 
school  teachers  had  felt  they  could  hold  their  own, 
the  foreign  mothers  came  at  last  to  take  away 
their  children's  school-books,  weeping  because 
they  were  forced  to  transfer  their  children  to  the 
parish  school. 

Now,  the  parish  school  tends  to  segregate  the 
children  of  the  foreign-bom.  Parishes  are 
formed  for  groups  of  the  same  speech,  so  a  parish 
school  will  embrace  children  of  only  one  nation- 
ality— German,  Polish,  Bohemian,  Lithuanian, 
Croatian,  Slovak,  Magyar,  Portuguese,  or  French 
Canadian,  as  the  case  may  be.  Often  priest  and 
teachers  have  been  imported,  and  only  the  moth- 
er-tongue is  used.  "English,"  says  a  school 
superintendent,  comes  to  be  taught  as  a  purely 
ornamental  language,  like  French  in  the  public 


254    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


high  school."  Hence  American-bom  children 
are  leaving  school  not  only  unable  to  read  and 
write  English,  but  scarcely  able  to  speak  it.  The 
foreign-speech  school,  while  it  binds  the  young  to 
their  parents,  to  their  people,  and  to  the  old  coun- 
try, cuts  them  off  from  America.  Says  a  Chicago 
Lithuanian  leader :  '  *  There  are  3000  of  our  chil- 
dren in  the  parochial  schools  here.  The  teachers 
are  ignorant,  illiterate  spinsters  from  Lithuania 
who  have  studied  here  two  or  three  years.  When 
at  fourteen  the  pupils  quit  school,  they  are  no 
more  advanced  than  the  public-school  pupils  of 
ten.  This  is  why  50,000  Lithuanians  here  have 
only  twenty  children  in  the  high  school. ' ' 

When,  now,  to  the  removal  of  the  second  gener- 
ation from  the  public  school  there  is  added,  as  is 
often  the  case,  the  endeavor  to  keep  them  away 
from  the  social  center,  the  small  park  field-house, 
the  public  playground,  the  social  settlement,  the 
secular  American  press  and  welfare  work  in  the 
factories,  it  is  plain  that  those  optimists  who  im- 
agine that  assimilation  of  the  immigrant  is  pro- 
ceeding unhindered  are  living  in  a  fool's  para- 
dise. 

SOCIAL.  DECLINE 

"Our  descendants,"  a  social  worker  remarked 
to  me,  "will  look  back  on  the  nineteenth  century 
as  our  Golden  Age,  just  as  we  look  back  on 
Greece."  Thoughtful  people  whose  work  takes 
them  into  the  slime  at  the  bottom  of  our  foreign- 
ized  cities  and  industrial  centers  find  decline 


SOCIAL  EFFECTS  OF  IMMIGRATION  255 


actually  upon  us.  A  visiting  nurse  who  has 
worked  for  seven  years  in  the  stock-yards  district 
of  Chicago  reports  that  of  late  the  drinking  habit 
is  taking  hold  of  foreign  women  at  an  alarming 
rate.  In  the  saloons  there  the  dignified  stein  has 
given  way  to  the  beer  pail.  In  the  Range  towns 
of  Minnesota  there  are  356  saloons,  of  which 
eighty-one  are  run  by  native-born,  the  rest  chiefly 
by  recent  immigrants.  Into  a  Pennsylvania  coal 
town  of  1,800  people,  mostly  foreign-born,  are 
shipped  each  week  a  car-load  of  beer  and  a  barrel 
of  whisky.  Where  the  new  foreign-born  are 
numerous,  women  and  children  frequent  the  sa- 
loons as  freely  as  the  men.  In  the  cities  family 
desertion  is  growing  at  a  great  rate  among  for- 
eign-born husbands.  Facts  are  justifying  the 
forecast  made  ten  years  ago  by  H.  G.  Wells:  **If 
things  go  on  as  they  are  going,  the  great  mass  of 
them  will  remain  a  very  low  lower  class — will  re- 
main largely  illiterate,  industrialized  peasants." 

The  continuance  of  depressive  immigration  will 
lead  to  nothing  catastrophic.  Riots  and  labor 
strife  will  oftener  break  out,  but  the  country  will 
certainly  not  weaken  nor  collapse.  Of  patriotism 
of  the  military  type  there  will  be  no  lack.  Sci- 
entific and  technical  advance  will  go  on  the  same. 
The  spread  of  business  organization  and  efficiency 
will  continue.  The  only  thing  that  will  happen 
will  be  a  mysterious  slackening  in  social  progress. 
The  mass  will  give  signs  of  sluggishness,  and  the 
social  procession  will  be  strung  out. 

We  are  engaged  in  a  generous  rivalry  with  the 


256    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 

West  Europeans  and  the  Australians  to  see  which 
can  do  the  most  to  lift  the  plane  of  life  of  the 
masses,  f  Presently  we  shall  be  dismayed  by  the 
sense  of  falling  behind,  We  shall  be  amazed  to 
find  the  Swiss  or  the  Danes  or  the  New  Zealand- 
ers  making  strides  we  cannot  match.  Stung  with 
mortification  at  losing  our  erstwhile  lead  in  the 
advancement  of  the  common  people,  we  shall  cast  i 
about  for  someone  to  blame.  Ultimate  causes,  of 
course,  will  be  overlooked ;  only  proximate  cause^ 
will  be  noticed.  There  will  be  loud  outcry  th^t 
mothers,  or  teachers,  or  clergjrmen,  or  editors,  6r 
social  workers  are  not  doing  their  duty.  Our  pub- 
lic schools,  solely  responsible  as  they  obviously 
are  for  the  intellectual  and  moral  characteristics 
of  the  people,  will  be  roundly  denounced;  and  ii 
will  be  argued  that  church  schools  must  take  their 
place.  There  will  be  trying  of  this  and  trying  of 
that,  together  with  much  ingenious  legislation. 
As  peasantism  spreads  and  inertia  proves  uncon- 
querable, the  opinion  will  grow  that  the  old  Amer- 
ican faith  in  the  capacity  and  desire  of  the  com- 
mon people  for  improvement  was  a  delusion,  and 
that  only  the  superior  classes  care  for  progress. 
Not  until  the  twenty-first  century  will  the  philo- 
sophic historian  be  able  to  declare  with  scientific 
certitude  that  the  cause  of  the  mysterious  decline 
that  came  ilpon  the  American  people  early  in  the 
twentieth  century  was  the  deterioration  of  popular 
intelligence  by  the  admission  of  great  numbers  of 
backward  immigrants. 


CHAPTER  XI 


IMMIGKANTS  IN  POLITICS 

ON  a  single  Chicago  hoarding,  before  the 
spring  election  of  1912,  the  writer  saw  the 
political  placards  of  candidates  with  the  follow- 
ing names:  Kelly,  Cassidy,  Slattery,  Alschuler, 
Pfaelzer,  Bartzen,  Umbach,  Andersen,  Romano, 
Knitckoff,  Deneen,  Hogue,  Burres,  Short.  The 
humor  of  calling  "Anglo-Saxon"  the  kind  of  gov- 
ernment these  gentlemen  will  give  is  obvious.  At 
that  time,  of  the  eighteen  principal  personages  in 
the  city  government  of  Chicago,  fourteen  had 
Irish  names,  and  three  had  German  names.  Of 
the  eleven  principal  officials  in  the  city  govern- 
ment of  Boston,  nine  had  Irish  names,  and  of  the 
forty-nine  members  of  the  Lower  House  from  the 
city  of  Boston,  forty  were  obviously  of  Hibernian 
extraction.  In  San  Francisco,  the  mayor,  all  the 
heads  of  the  municipal  departments,  and  ten  out 
of  eighteen  members  on  the  board  of  supervisors, 
bore  names  reminiscent  of  the  Green  Isle.  As 
far  back  as  1871,  of  112  chiefs  of  police  from 
twenty-two  States  who  attended  the  national  po- 
lice convention,  seventy-seven  bore  Irish  names, 
and  eleven  had  German  names.  In  1881,  of  the 
chiefs  of  police  in  forty-eight  cities,  thirty-three 
were  clearly  Irish,  and  five  were  clearly  German. 

259 


260    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


In  1908,  on  the  occasion  of  a  ''home-coming" 
celebration  in  Boston,  a  newspaper  told  how  the 
returning  sons  of  Boston  were  "greeted  by 
Mayor  Fitzgerald  and  the  following  members  of 
Congress:  O'Connell,  Kelihar,  Sullivan,  and 
McNary — following  in  the  footsteps  of  Webster, 
Sunmer,  Adams,  and  Hoar.  They  were  told  of 
the  great  work  as  Mayor  of  the  late  beloved  Pat- 
rick Collins.  At  the  City  Hall  they  found  the 
sons  of  Irish  exiles  and  immigrants  administering 
the  affairs  of  the  metropolis  of  New  England. 
Besides  the  Mayor,  they  were  greeted  by  John  J. 
Murphy,  Chainnan  of  the  board  of  assessors; 
Commissioner  of  Streets  Doyle;  Commissioner 
of  Baths  O'Brien.  Mr.  Coakley  is  the  head  of  the 
Park  Department,  and  Dr.  Durgan  directs  the 
Health  Department.  The  Chief  of  the  Fire  De- 
partment is  John  A.  Mullen.  Head  of  the  Mu- 
nicipal Printing  Plant  is  Mr,  Whelan.  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Street  Cleaning  is  Cummings; 
Superintendent  of  Sewers  Leahy ;  Superintendent 
of  Buildings  is  Nolan;  City  Treasurer,  Slattery; 
Police  Commissioner,  O'Meara." 

The  Irish  domination  of  our  Northern  cities  is 
the  broadest  mark  immigration  has  left  on  Amer- 
ican politics;  the  immigrants  from  Ireland,  for 
the  most  part  excessively  poor,  never  got  their 
feet  upon  the  land  as  did  the  Germans  and  the 
Scandinavians,  but  remained  huddled  in  cities. 
United  by  strong  race  feelings,  they  held  together 
as  voters,  and,  although  never  a  clear  majority, 
were  able  in  time  to  capture  control  of  most  of 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  261 


the  greater  municipalities.  Now,  for  all  their 
fine  Celtic  traits,  these  Irish  immigrants  had 
neither  the  temperament  nor  the  training  to  make 
a  success  of  popular  government.  They  were 
totally  without  experience  of  the  kind  Americans 
had  acquired  in  the  working  of  democratic  insti- 
tutions. The  ordinary  American  by  this  time 
had  become  tinctured  with  the  spirit  of  legalism. 
Many  voters  were  able  to  look  beyond  the  persons 
involved  in  a  political  contest  and  recognize  the 
principles  at  stake.  Such  popular  maxims  as: 
"No  man  should  be  a  judge  in  his  own  case," 
"The  ballot  a  responsibility,"  "Patriotism  above 
party,"  "Measures,  not  men,"  "A  public  office  is 
a  public  trust,"  fostered  self-restraint  and  helped 
the  voters  to  take  an  impersonal,  long-range  view 
of  political  contests. 

Warm-hearted,  sociable,  clannish,  and  un- 
trained, the  naturalized  Irish  failed  to  respect  the 
first  principles  of  civics.  "What  is  the  Constitu- 
tion between  friends?"  expresses  their  point  of 
view.  In  their  eyes,  an  election  is  not  the  deci- 
sion of  a  gTeat,  impartial  jury,  but  a  struggle  be- 
tween the  "ins"  and  the  "outs."  Those  who 
vote  the  same  way  are  "friends."  To  scratch 
or  to  bolt  is  to  "go  back  on  your  friends."  Places 
and  contracts  are  "spoils."  The  official's  first 
duty  is  to  find  berths  for  his  supporters.  Not 
fitness,  but  party  work,  is  one's  title  to  a  place  on 
the  municipal  pay-roll.  The  city  employee  is  to 
serve  his  party  rather  than  the  public  that  pays 
his  salary.    Even  the  justice  of  courts  is  to  be- 


262    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


come  a  matter  of  "pull"  and  "stand  in,"  rather 
than  of  inflexible  rules. 

A  genial  young  Harvard  man  who  has  made  the 
Good  Government  movement  a  power  in  a  cer- 
tain New  England  city  said  to  me:  "The  Ger- 
mans want  to  know  which  candidate  is  better 
qualified  for  the  office.  Among  the  Irish  I  have 
never  heard  such  a  consideration  mentioned. 
They  ask,  'Who  wants  this  candidate?'  'Who  is 
behind  him  ? '  I  have  lined  up  a  good  many  Irish 
in  support  of  Good  Government  men,  but  never 
by  setting  forth  the  merits  of  a  matter  or  a  can- 
didate. I  approach  my  Irish  friends  with  the 
personal  appeal,  'Do  this  for  me!'  Nearly  all 
the  Irish  who  support  our  cause  do  it  on  a  per- 
sonal loyalty  basis.  The  best  of  the  Irish  in  this 
city  have  often  done  as  much  harm  to  the  cause 
of  Good  Government  as  the  worst.  Mayor  C,  a 
high-minded  Irishman  desiring  to  do  the  best  he 
could  for  the  city,  gave  us  as  bad  a  government 
as  Mayor  F.,  who  thought  of  nothing  but  feather- 
ing his  own  nest.  Mayor  C.  'stood  by  his 
friends.'  " 

The  Hibernian  domination  has  given  our  cities 
genial  officials,  brave  policemen,  and  gaUant  fire- 
fighters. It  has  also  given  them  the  name  of  be- 
ing the  worst-governed  cities  in  the  civilized 
world.  The  mismanagement  and  corruption  of 
the  great  cities  of  America  have  become  a  plane- 
tary scandal,  and  have  dealt  the  principle  of  man- 
hood suffrage  the  worst  blow  it  has  received  in 
the  last  half-century.    Since  the  close  of  the  Civil 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  263 


War,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  city-dwellers  have 
languished  miserably  or  perished  prematurely 
from  the  bad  water,  bad  housing,  poor  sanitation, 
and  rampant  vice  in  American  municipalities  run 
on  the  principles  of  the  Celtic  clan. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  likely  that  our  British, 
Teutonic,  Scandinavian,  and  Jewish  naturalized 
citizens — still  more  our  English-Canadian  voters 
— have  benefited  American  politics.  In  politics 
men  are  swayed  by  passion,  prejudice,  or  reason. 
By  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
average  American  had  come  to  be  on  his  guard 
against  passion  in  politics,  but  not  yet  had  he 
reached  the  plane  of  reason.  This  left  him  the 
prey  of  prejudice.  Men  inherited  their  politics, 
and  bragged  of  having  always  "voted  straight." 
They  voted  Democratic  for  Jefferson's  sake,  or 
Republican  from  love  of  Lincoln.  The  citizens 
followed  ruts,  while  the  selfish  interests  "fol- 
lowed the  ball."  Now,  the  intelligent  natural- 
ized foreigner,  having  inherited  none  of  our  prej- 
udices, would  not  respond  to  ancient  cries  or 
war-time  issues.  He  inquired  pointedly  what 
each  party  proposed  to  do  now.  The  abandon- 
ment of  "waving  the  bloody  shirt"  and  the  sud- 
den appearance  of  the  politics  of  actuality  in  the 
North,  in  the  eighties,  came  about  through  the 
naturalization  of  Karl  and  Ole.  The  South  has 
few  foreign-bom  voters,  and  the  South  is  pre- 
cisely that  part  of  the  country  in  which  the  reign 
of  prejudice  in  politics  has  longest  delayed  the 
advent  of  efficient  and  progressive  government. 


264    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


In  1910  there  were  certainly  three  million 
naturahzed  citizens  in  the  United  States.  In 
southern  New  England  and  New  York  they  con- 
stitute a  quarter  of  all  the  white  voters.  The 
same  is  true  of  Illinois  and  the  Old  Northwest. 
In  Providence,  Buffalo,  Newark,  St.  Paul,  and 
Minneapolis,  there  are  two  foreign  voters  to  three 
native  white  voters.  In  Milwaukee,  Detroit. 
Cleveland,  and  Boston,  the  ratio  is  about  one  to 
two.  In  Paterson,  Chicago,  and  New  York,  the 
ratio  is  nearer  three  to  five,  and  in  Fall  River  it 
is  three  to  four.  When  the  foreigners  are  intel- 
hgent  and  experienced  in  the  use  of  the  ballot, 
their  civic  worth  does  not  suffer  by  comparison 
with  that  of  the  natives.  Indianapolis  and  Kan- 
sas City,  in  which  the  natives  outnumber  the  natu- 
ralized ten  to  one,  do  not  overshadow  in  civic  ex- 
cellence the  Twin  Cities  of  Minnesota,  with  three 
natives  to  two  naturalized.  Cleveland,  in  which 
the  naturalized  citizens  constitute  a  third,  is  po- 
litically superior  to  Cincinnati,  in  which  they  are 
less  than  a  sixth.  Chicago,  with  thrice  the  pro- 
portion of  naturalized  citizens  Philadelphia  has, 
was  roused  and  strugghng  with  the  python  of  cor- 
ruption while  yet  the  city  by  the  Delaware  slept. 

THE  NEW  IMMIGEATION  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

Between  1895  and  1896  came  the  great  shift  in 
the  sources  of  immigration.  In  the  former  year, 
55  per  cent,  of  the  aliens  came  from  northwestern 
Europe ;  in  the  next  year,  southern  and  southeast- 
ern Europe  gained  the  upper  hand,  and  have  kept 


IMMIGEAXTS  IX  POLITICS  265 


it  ever  since.  With  the  change  in  nationalities 
came  a  great  change  in  the  civic  attitude  of  the 
immigTants.  The  Immigration  Commission 
found  that  from  80  to  92  per  cent,  of  the  immi- 
grants from  northwestern  Europe,  resident  five 
years  or  more  in  this  country,  have  acquired  cit- 
izenship or  have  taken  out  first  papers.  Very 
different  are  the  following  figures,  which  show  the 
interest  in  citizenship  of  the  newer  immigrant?; : 

PER  CEXT. 
XATURAUZED 


Kussian  Hebrews    57 

Austrians    53 

North  Italians   46 

Bulgarians    37 

Poles    33 

Lithuanians    32.5 

South  Italians    30 

Eussians    28 

Magyars    27 

Slovaks    23 

Rumanians    22 

Syrians    21 

Greeks    20 

Portuguese    5.5 


In  1890  and  in  1900,  58  per  cent,  of  the  quali- 
fied foreign-bom  men  were  voters;  by  1910  the 
proportion  had  fallen  to  45.6  per  cent.  The  pres- 
ence of  multitudes  of  floating  laborers  who  have 
no  intention  of  making  this  country  their  home, 
a  marked  indifference  to  citizenship  on  the  part 
of  some  nationalities,  and  the  stiffer  require- 


266    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


ments  for  naturalization  imposed  under  the  act  of 
1906,  have  caused  the  number  of  non-naturalized 
qualified  foreigners  in  this  country  to  swell  from 
approximately  2,000,000  in  1900  to  3,500,000  in 
1910.  As  things  are  going,  we  may  expect  a  great 
increase  in  the  number  of  the  unenfranchised. 
No  doubt  the  country  is  better  off  for  their  not 
voting.  Nevertheless,  let  it  not  be  overlooked 
that  this  growth  in  the  proportion  of  voteless 
wage-earners  subtracts  from  the  natural  political 
strength  of  labor.  The  appeal  of  labor  in  an  in- 
dustry like  the  cotton  manufacture  of  the  North, 
in  which,  besides  the  multitude  of  women  and  chil- 
dren, 70  per  cent,  of  the  foreign-born  men  remain 
aliens  after  five  years  of  residence,  is  likely  to  re- 
ceive scant  consideration  by  the  ordinary  legis- 
lature. Nor  will  such  labor  fare  better  at  the 
hands  of  local  authorities.  The  anti-strike  ani- 
mus of  the  police  in  Lawrence,  Little  Falls,  and 
Paterson  was  voiced  by  the  official  who  gave  to 
the  press  the  statement:  "We  have  kept  the  for- 
eign element  in  subjection  before,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  do  so  as  long  as  I  am  chief  of  Little  Falls' 
police."  Thus,  without  intending  it,  some  of  our 
commonwealths  are  accumulating  voteless  work- 
ers, like  those  conservative  European  states  which 
restrict  manhood  suffrage  in  the  industrial 
classes. 

THE  NATUBALIZED  IMMIGRANTS  AOT)  THEIR  LEADERS 

"Come  over  here  quick,  Luigi,"  writes  an  Ital- 
ian to  his  friend  in  Palermo.    "This  is  a  wonder- 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  269 


ful  country.  You  can  do  anything  you  want  to, 
and,  besides,  they  give  you  a  vote  you  can  get  two 
dollars  for!"  This  Italian  was  an  ignorant  man, 
but  not  necessarily  a  bad  man.  It  would  not  be 
just  to  look  upon  the  later  naturalized  citizens  as 
caring  less  for  the  suffrage  than  the  older  immi- 
grants. Some  of  them  appreciate  the  ballot  all 
the  more  from  having  been  denied  it  in  the  old 
country.  For  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
and  the  Fourth  of  July  they  show  a  naive  enthu- 
siasm which  we  Americans  felt  a  generation  ago, 
before  our  muck  had  been  raked.  **The  spirit 
of  revolt  against  wrong,"  says  a  well-known 
worker  among  immigrants,  '4s  stronger  in  the 
foreign-bom  than  in  the  natives,  because  they 
come  here  expecting  so  much  democracy,  and 
they  are  shocked  by  the  reality  they  find.  It  is 
they  who  insist  upon  the  complete  program  of  so- 
cial justice. ' '  Granting  all  this,  there  is  no  deny- 
ing, however,  that  many  of  the  later  immigrants 
have  only  a  dim  understanding  of  what  the  ballot 
means  and  how  it  may  be  used. 

Thirty  years  ago  we  knew  as  little  of  the 
ways  of  the  ward  boss  as  we  knew  of  the  mega- 
therium or  the  great  auk.  The  sources  of  his 
power  were  as  mysterious  as  were  the  sources  of 
the  Nile  before  Speke  and  Baker.  Now,  thanks 
to  Miss  Addams  and  other  settlement-workers 
who  have  studied  him  in  action  from  close  at 
hand,  we  have  him  on  a  film.  The  ward  boss  was 
the  discoverer  of  the  fact  that  the  ordinary  immi- 
grant is  a  very  poor,  ignorant,  and  helpless  man. 


270    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


in  the  greatest  need  of  assistance  and  protection. 
Nevertheless,  this  man  has,  or  soon  will  have,  one 
thing  the  politician  greatly  covets,  namely,  a  vote. 
The  petty  politician  soon  learned  that  by  be- 
friending and  aiding  the  foreigners  at  the  right 
time,  he  could  build  up  an  "influence"  which  he 
might  use  or  sell  to  his  own  enrichment.  So  the 
ward  politicians  became  pioneers  in  social  work. 
For  the  sake  of  controlling  votes,  they  did  many 
things  that  the  social  settlement  does  for  nothing. 

It  is  Alderman  Tim  who  gets  the  Italian  a  per- 
mit for  his  push-cart  or  fruit-stand,  who  finds  him 
a  city-hall  job,  or  a  place  with  a  public-service 
corporation,  who  protects  him  if  he  violates  law 
or  ordinance  in  running  his  business,  who  goes 
his  bail  if  he  is  arrested,  and  * '  fixes  things ' '  with 
the  police  judge  or  the  state's  attorney  when  he 
comes  to  trial.  Even  before  Giuseppe  is  natural- 
ized, it  is  Tim  who  remembers  him  at  Christmas 
with  a  big  turkey,  pays  his  rent  at  a  pinch,  or 
wins  his  undying  gratitude  by  saving  his  baby 
from  a  pauper  burial  or  sending  carriages  and 
flowers  to  the  funeral. 

All  this  kindness  and  timely  aid  is  prompted  by 
selfish  motives.  Amply  is  Tim  repaid  by  Giusep- 
pe's vote  on  election  day.  But  at  first  Giuseppe 
misses  the  secret  of  the  politician's  interest  in 
him,  and  votes  Tim-wise  as  one  shows  a  favor  to 
a  friend.  Little  does  he  dream  of  the  dollar- 
harvest  from  the  public-service  companies  and 
the  vice  interests  Tim  reaps  with  the  ''power" 
he  has  built  up  out  of  the  votes  of  the  foreigners. 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  271 


If,  however,  Giuseppe  starts  to  be  independent  in 
the  election  booth,  he  is  startled  by  the  Jekyll- 
Hyde  transformation  of  his  erstwhile  friend  and 
patron.  He  is  menaced  with  loss  of  job,  with- 
drawal of  permit  or  license.  Suddenly  the  cur- 
rent is  turned  on  in  the  city  ordinances  affecting 
him,  and  he  is  horrified  to  find  himself  in  a  mys- 
terious network  of  live  wires.  With  the  conniv- 
ance of  a  corrupt  police  force,  Tim  can  even  ruin 
him  on  a  trumped-up  charge. 

The  law  of  Pennsylvania  allows  any  voter  who\ 
demands  it  to  receive  "assistance"  in  the  mark-] 
ing  of  his  ballot.  So  in  Pittsburgh,  Tim  expects 
Giuseppe  to  demand  ''assistance"  and  to  take 
Tim  with  him  into  the  booth  to  mark  his  ballot 
for  him.  Sometimes  the  election  judges  let  Tim 
thrust  himself  into  the  booth  despite  the  foreign- 
er's protests,  and  watch  how  he  marks  his  ballot. 
In  one  precinct  92  per  cent,  of  the  voters  received 
"assistance."  Two  Italians  who  refused  it  lost 
their  jobs  forthwith.  The  high-spirited  North 
Italians  resent  such  intrusion,  and  some  of  them 
threaten  to  cut  to  pieces  the  interloper.  But  al- 
ways the  system  is  too  strong  for  them. 

Thus  the  way  of  Tim  is  to  allure  or  to  intimi- 
date, or  even  combine  the  two.  The  immigrant 
erecting  a  little  store  is  visited  by  a  building  in- 
spector and  warned  that  his  interior  arrange- 
ments are  all  wrong.  His  friends  urge  the  dis- 
tracted man  to  ' '  see  Tim. ' '  He  does  so,  and  kind 
Tim  "fixes  it  up,"  gaining  thereby  another  loyal 
henchman.    The  victim  never  learns  that  the  in- 


272    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


spector  was  sent  to  teacli  him  the  need  of  a  pro- 
tector. So  long  as  the  immigrant  is  "right,"  he 
may  put  an  encroaching  bay-window  on  his  house 
or  store,  keep  open  his  saloon  after  midnight,  or 
pack  into  his  lodging-house  more  than  the  legal 
number  of  lodgers.  Moved  ostensibly  by  a  deep 
concern  for  public  health  or  safety  or  morals,  the 
city  council  enacts  a  great  variety  of  health,  build- 
ing, and  trades  ordinances,  in  order  that  Tim  may 
have  plenty  of  clubs  to  hold  over  the  foreigner's 
head. 

So  between  boss  and  immigrant  grows  up  a 
relation  like  that  between  a  feudal  lord  and  his 
vassals.  In  return  for  the  boss's  help  and  pro- 
tection, the  immigrant  gives  regularly  his  vote. 
The  small  fry  get  drinks  or  jobs,  or  help  in  time 
of  trouble.  The  padrone,  liquor-dealer,  or  lodg- 
ing-house keeper  gets  license  or  permit  or  immu- 
nity from  prosecution,  provided  he  delivers" 
the  votes  of  enough  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 
The  ward  boss  realizes  perfectly  what  his  polit- 
ical power  rests  on,  and  is  very  conscientious  in 
looking  after  his  supporters.  Of  the  Irish  ''gray 
wolves"  in  the  Chicago  council  I  was  told.  ''Each 
of  them  is  a  natural  ward  leader,  and  wiU  go 
through  hell-fire  for  his  people  and  they  for  him." 

To  the  boss  with  a  hold  on  the  immigrant  the 
requirement  that  the  poor  fellow  shall  live  five 
years  in  this  country  before  voting  presents  itself 
as  an  empty  legal  formality.  In  1905  a  special 
examiner  of  the  Federal  Department  of  Justice 
reported:    "Naturalization  frauds  have  grown 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  273 


and  spread  with  the  growth  and  spread  of  the 
alien  population  of  the  United  States,  until  there 
is  scarcely  a  city  or  county-seat  town  .  .  .  where 
in  some  form  these  frauds  have  not  from  time  to 
time  been  committed."  In  1845  a  Louisiana 
judge  was  impeached  and  removed  for  fraud,  the 
principal  evidence  being  that  he  had  issued  cer- 
tificates to  400  aliens  in  one  day.  The  legislature 
might  have  been  more  lenient  could  it  have  fore- 
seen that  in  1868  a  single  judge  in  New  York 
would  issue  2500  of  such  certificates  in  one  day! 
The  gigantic  naturalization  frauds  committed  in 
the  Presidential  compaign  of  1868  resulted  in  an 
investigation  by  Congress  and  in  the  placing  of 
congressional  elections  under  Federal  supervi- 
sion. During  the  month  of  October  two  New 
York  judges  issued  54,000  certificates.  An  in- 
vestigation in  1902  showed  about  25,000  fraudu- 
lent certificates  of  naturalization  in  use  in  that 
city. 

There  is  hardly  need  nowadays  to  recount  what 
Tim  and  his  kind  have  done  with  the  power  they 
filched  through  the  votes  of  Giuseppe  and  Jan  and 
Michael.  They  have  sold  out  the  city  to  the  fran- 
chise-seeking corporations.  They  have  jobbed 
public  works  and  pocketed  a  rake-off"  on  all 
municipal  supplies.  They  have  multiplied  jobs 
and  filled  them  with  lazy  henchmen.  By  making 
merchandise  of  building  laws  or  health  ordi- 
nances, they  have  caused  an  unknown  number  of 
people  to  be  crushed,  or  burned,  or  poisoned. 
Worst  of  all,  by  selling  immunity  from  police  in- 


274    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


terference  to  the  vice  interests,  they  have  let  the 
race  be  preyed  on  and  consumed  in  the  bud. 
Thanks  to  their  *  *  protection, ' '  a  shocking  propor- 
tion of  the  inhabitants  of  our  cities  of  mixed  popu- 
lation are  destroyed  by  drinking,  dissipation,  and 
venereal  diseases. 

It  is  in  the  cities  with  many  naturalized  for- 
eigners or  enfranchised  negroes  that  the  vice  in- 
terests have  had  the  freest  hand  in  exploiting  and 
degrading  the  people.  These  foreigners  have  no 
love  for  vice,  but  unwittingly  they  become  the 
corner-stone  of  the  system  that  supports  it.  The 
city  that  has  had  the  most  and  the  rawest  for- 
eign-born voters  is  the  city  of  the  longest  and 
closest  partnership  of  the  police  with  vice.  Tam- 
many Hall  first  gained  power  by  its  "voting 
gangs"  of  foreigners,  and  ever  since  its  Old 
Guard  has  been  the  ignorant,  naturalized  immi- 
grants. Exposed  again  and  again,  and  thought 
to  be  shattered,  Tammany  has  survived  all  shocks, 
because  its  supple/  of  raw  material  has  never  been 
cut  off.  Not  the  loss  of  its  friends  has  ever  de- 
feated it;  only  the  union  of  its  foes.  The  only 
things  it  fears  are  those  that  bore  from  within — 
social  settlements,  social  centers,  the  quick  intel- 
ligence of  the  immigrant  Hebrew,  stricter  natural- 
ization, and  restriction  of  immigration. 

In  every  American  city  with  a  large  pliant  for- 
eign vote  have  appeared  the  boss,  the  machine, 
and  the  Tammany  way.  Once  the  machine  gets 
a  grip  on  the  situation,  it  broadens  and  entrenches 
its  power  by  intimidation  at  the  polls,  ballot 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  275 


frauds,  vote  purchase,  saloon  influence,  and  the 
support  of  the  vicious  and  criminal.  But  its  tap- 
root is  the  simple-minded  foreigner  or  negro,  and 
without  them  no  lasting  vicious  political  control 
has  shown  itself  in  any  of  our  cities. 

The  machine  in  power  uses  the  foreigner  to 
keep  in  power.  The  Italian  who  opens  an  ice- 
cream parlor  has  to  have  a  victualer's  license,  and 
he  can  keep  this  license  only  by  delivering  Italian 
votes.  The  Polish  saloon-keeper  loses  his  liq- 
uor license  if  he  fails  to  line  up  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen for  the  local  machine.  The  politician  who 
can  get  dispensations  for  the  foreigners  who  want 
their  beer  on  a  Sunday  picnic  is  the  man  who  at- 
tracts the  foreign  vote.  Thus,  until  they  get  their 
eyes  open  and  see  how  they  are  being  used,  the 
foreigners  constitute  an  asset  of  the  established 
political  machine,  neutralizing  the  anti-machine 
ballots  of  an  equal  number  of  indignant  intelligent 
American  voters. 

The  saloon  is  often  an  independent  swayer  of 
the  foreign  vote.  The  saloon-keeper  is  interested 
in  fighting  all  legal  regulation  of  his  own  business, 
and  of  other  businesses — gambling,  dance-halls, 
and  prostitution — which  stimulate  drinking.  If 
''blue"  laws  are  on  the  statute-book,  these  in- 
terests may  combine  to  seat  in  the  mayor's  chair 
a  man  pledged  not  to  enforce  them.  Even  if  the 
saloon-keeper  has  no  political  ax  of  his  own  to 
grind,  his  masters,  the  brewers,  will  insist  that  he 
get  out  the  vote  for  the  benefit  of  themselves  or 
their  friends.    Since  liberal  plying  with  beer  is 


276    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


a  standard  means  of  getting  out  the  foreign  vote, 
the  immigrant  saloon-keeper  is  obliged  to  become 
the  debaucher  and  betrayer  of  his  fellow-country- 
men. In  Chicago  the  worthy  Germans  and  Bo- 
hemians are  marshaled  in  the  ''United  Societies," 
ostensibly  social  organizations  along  nationality 
lines,  but  really  the  machinery  through  which  the 
brewers  and  liquor-dealers  may  sway  the  foreign- 
born  vote  not  only  in  defense  of  liquor,  but  also 
in  defense  of  other  corrupt  and  affiliated  interests. 

The  foreign  press  is  another  means  of  mislead- 
ing the  naturalized  voters.  These  newspapers — 
Polish,  Bohemian,  Italian,  Greek,  Yiddish,  etc., — 
while  they  have  no  small  influence  with  their 
readers,  are  poorly  supported,  and  often  in  finan- 
cial straits.  Many  of  them,  therefore,  can  be 
tempted  to  sell  their  political  influence  to  the  high- 
est bidder,  which  is,  of  course,  the  party  repre- 
senting the  special  interests.  Thus  the  innocent 
foreign-born  readers  are  led  like  sheep  to  the 
shambles,  and  Privilege  gains  another  intrench- 
ing-tool. 

THE  LOSS  OF  POLITICAL  LIKE-MINDEDNESS 

If  the  immigrant  is  neither  debauched  nor  mis- 
led, but  votes  his  opinions,  is  he  then  an  element 
of  strength  to  us? 

When  a  people  has  reached  such  a  degree  of 
political  like-mindedness,  that  fundamentals  are 
taken  for  granted,  it  is  free  to  tackle  new  ques- 
tions as  they  come  up.  But  if  it  admits  to  citizen- 
ship myriads  of  strangers  who  have  not  yet 


Class  of  Foreign-Born  Wdiui  ii  ( t  arinthians)  at  the  Cleveland  Hard- 
ware Co.,  Cleveland,  O..  Jleetiiig  for  Instruction  in  English  in 
the  Factory,  Twice  a  Week  from  5  to  6;30 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  279 


passed  the  civic  kindergarten,  questions  that  were 
supposed  to  be  settled  are  reopened.  The  citi- 
zens are  made  to  thresh  over  again  old  straw — 
the  relation  of  church  to  state,  of  church  to  school, 
of  state  to  parent,  of  law  to  the  liquor  trade. 
Meanwhile,  ripe  sheaves  ready  to  yield  the  wheat 
of  wisdom  under  the  flails  of  discussion  lie  un- 
touched. Pressing  questions — public  hygiene, 
conservation,  the  control  of  monopoly,  the  protec- 
tion of  labor,  go  to  the  foot  of  the  docket,  and  pub- 
lic interests  suffer. 

Some  are  quite  cheerful  about  the  confusion, 
cross-purposes,  and  delay  that  come  with  hetero- 
geneity, because  they  think  the  variety  of  views 
introduced  by  immigration  is  a  fine  thing,  keeps 
us  from  getting  into  a  rut."  The  plain  truth  is, 
that  rarely  does  an  immigrant  bring  in  his  intel- 
lectual baggage  anything  of  use  to  us.  The  music 
of  Mascagni  and  Debussy,  the  plays  of  Ibsen  and 
Maeterlinck,  the  poetry  of  Rostand  and  Haupt- 
mann,  the  fiction  of  Jokai  and  Sienkiewicz  were 
not  brought  to  us  by  way  of  Ellis  Island.  What 
we  want  is  not  ideas  merely,  but  fruitful  ideas, 
fructifying  ideas.  By  debating  the  ideas  of 
Nietzsche,  Ostwald,  Bergson,  Metchnikoff,  or 
Ellen  Key,  American  thought  is  stimulated.  But 
should  we  gain  from  the  introduction  of  old  Asi- 
atic points  of  view,  which  would  reopen  such  ques- 
tions as  witchcraft,  child-marriage,  and  suttee? 
The  elashings  that  arise  from  the  presence  among 
us  of  many  voters  with  medieval  minds  are  sheer 
waste  of  energy.    While  we  Americans  wrangle 


280    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


over  the  old  issues  of  clericalism,  separate  schools, 
and  "personal  liberty,"  the  little  homogeneous 
peoples — Norwegians  and  Danes  and  New  Zeal- 
anders — are  forging  ahead  of  us  in  rational  poli- 
tics and  learning  to  look  pityingly  upon  us  as  a 
chaos  rather  than  a  people. 

POLITICAL  MYSTICISM  VS.  COMMON  SENSE 

If  you  should  ask  an  Englishman  whether  the 
tone  of  political  life  in  his  country  would  re- 
main unaffected  by  the  admission  to  the  electorate 
of  a  couple  of  million  Cypriotes,  Vlachs,  and  Bes- 
sarabians  after  five  years'  residence,  he  would  take 
you  for  a  madman.  Suggest  to  the  German  that 
the  plane  of  political  intelligence  in  reading  and 
thinking  Germany  would  not  be  lowered  by  the 
access  to  the  ballot-box  of  multitudes  of  Serbs, 
Georgians,  and  Druses  of  Lebanon,  and  he  will 
consign  you  to  bedlam.  Assure  the  son  of  Nor- 
way that  the  vote  of  the  Persian  or  Yemenite,  of 
sixty  months'  residence  in  Norway,  will  be  as 
often  wise  and  right  as  his  own,  and  he  will  be  in- 
sulted. It  is  only  we  Americans  who  assume  that 
the  voting  of  the  Middle  Atlantic  States,  with 
their  million  of  naturalized  citizens,  or  of  the  East 
North  Central  States,  with  their  million,  is  as 
sane,  discriminating,  and  forward-looking  as  it 
would  be  without  them. 

The  Italian  historian  and  sociologist  Ferrero, 
after  reviewing  our  immigration  policy,  concludes 
that  the  Americans,  far  from  being  "practical," 
are  really  the  mystics  of  the  modern  world.  He 


IMMIGRANTS  IN  POLITICS  281 


says:  "To  confer  citizenship  each  year  upon 
great  numbers  of  men  born  and  educated  in  for- 
eign countries — ^men  who  come  with  ideas  and 
sympathies  totally  out  of  spirit  with  the  diverse 
conditions  in  the  new  country;  to  grant  them 
political  rights  they  do  not  want,  and  of  which 
they  have  never  thought;  to  compel  them  to  de- 
clare allegiance  to  a  political  constitution  which 
they  often  do  not  understand ;  to  try  to  transform 
subjects  of  old  European  monarchies  into  free 
citizens  of  young  American  republics  over  night 
— is  not  all  this  to  do  violence  to  common  sense?" 


CHAPTER  XII 


AMEKICAN  BLOOD  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD 

AS  I  sought  to  show,  near  the  end  of  my  initial 
chapter,  the  conditions  of  settlement  of  this 
country  caused  those  of  uncommon  energy  and  ven- 
turesomeness  to  outmultiply  the  rest  of  the  popu- 
lation. Thus  came  into  existence  the  pioneering 
breed;  and  this  breed  increased  until  it  is  safe 
to  estimate  that  fully  half  of  white  Americans  with 
native  grandparents  have  one  or  more  pioneers 
among  their  ancestors.  Whatever  valuable  race 
traits  distinguish  the  American  people  from  the 
parent  European  stocks  are  due  to  the  efflores- 
cence of  this  breed.  Without  it  there  would  have 
been  little  in  the  performance  of  our  people  to 
arrest  the  attention  of  the  world.  Now  we  con- 
front the  melancholy  spectacle  of  this  pioneer 
breed  being  swamped  and  submerged  by  an  over- 
whelming tide  of  latecomers  from  the  old-world 
hive.  In  Atlanta  still  seven  out  of  eight 
white  men  had  American  parents;  in  Nash- 
ville and  Richmond,  four  out  of  five;  in  Kan- 
sas City,  two  out  of  three;  and  in  Los  An- 
geles, one  out  of  two;  but  in  Detroit,  Cleveland, 
and  Paterson  one  man  out  of  five  had  American 
parents;  in  Chicago  and  New  York,  one  out  of 
six;  in  Milwaukee,  one  out  of  seven;  and  in  Fall 

282 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  285 


River,  one  out  of  nine.  Certainly  never  since  the 
colonial  era  have  the  foreign-horn  and  their  chil- 
dren formed  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  as  at  the  present  moment.  I  scanned 
368  persons  as  they  passed  me  in  Union  Square, 
New  York,  at  a  time  when  the  garment-workers 
of  the  Fifth  Avenue  lofts  were  returning  to  their 
homes.  Only  thirty-eight  of  these  passers-by  had 
the  type  of  face  one  would  find  at  a  county  fair 
in  the  West  or  South. 

In  the  six  or  seven  hundred  thousand  strangers 
that  yearly  join  themselves  to  us  for  good  and 
all,  there  are  to  be  found,  of  course,  every  talent 
and  every  beauty.  Out  of  the  steerage  come  per- 
sons as  fine  and  noble  as  any  who  have  trodden 
American  soil.  Any  adverse  characterization  of 
an  immigrant  stream  implies,  then,  only  that  the 
trait  is  relatively  frequent,  not  that  it  is  universal. 

In  this  sense  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  blood 
now  being  injected  into  the  veins  of  our  people 
is  * '  sub-common. ' '  To  one  accustomed  to  the  as- 
pect of  the  normal  American  population,  the  Cali- 
ban type  shows  up  with  a  frequency  that  is  start- 
ling. Observe  immigrants  not  as  they  come 
travel-wan  up  the  gang-plank,  nor  as  they  issue 
toil-begrimed  from  pit's  mouth  or  mill  gate,  but 
in  their  gatherings,  washed,  combed,  and  in  their 
Sunday  best.  You  are  struck  by  the  fact  that 
from  ten  to  twenty  per  cent,  are  hirsute,  low- 
browed, big-faced  persons  of  obviously  low  men- 
tality. Not  that  they  suggest  evil.  They  simply 
look  out  of  place  in  black  clothes  and  stitf  collar. 


286    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


since  clearly  they  belong  in  skins,  in  wattled  huts 
at  the  close  of  the  Great  Ice  Age.  These  oxlike 
men  are  descendants  of  those  who  always  stayed 
behind.  Those  in  whom  the  soul  burns  vnth.  the 
dull,  smoky  flame  of  the  pine-knot  stuck  to  the 
soil,  and  are  now  thick  in  the  sluiceways  of  immi- 
gration. Those  in  whom  it  burns  with  a  clear, 
luminous  flame  have  been  attracted  to  the  cities 
of  the  home  land  and,  having  prospects,  have  no 
motive  to  submit  themselves  to  the  hardships  of 
the  steerage. 

To  the  practised  eye,  the  physiognomy  of  cer- 
tain groups  unmistakably  proclaims  inferiority 
of  type.  I  have  seen  gatherings  of  the  foreign- 
bom  in  which  narrow  and  sloping  foreheads  were 
the  rule.  The  shortness  and  smallness  of  the 
crania  were  very  noticeable.  There  was  much 
facial  asymmetry.  Among  the  women,  beauty, 
aside  from  the  fleeting,  epidermal  bloom  of  girl- 
hood, was  quite  lacking.  In  every  face  there  was 
something  wrong — lips  thick,  mouth  coarse,  up- 
per lip  too  long,  cheek-bones  too  high,  chin  poorly 
formed,  the  bridge  of  the  nose  hollowed,  the  base 
of  the  nose  tilted,  or  else  the  whole  face  progna- 
thous. There  were  so  many  sugar-loaf  heads, 
moon-faces,  slit  mouths,  lantern-jaws,  and  goose- 
bill  noses  that  one  might  imagine  a  malicious  jinn 
had  amused  himself  by  casting  human  beings  in 
a  set  of  skew-molds  discarded  by  the  Creator. 

Our  captains  of  industry  give  a  crowbar  to  the 
immigrant  with  a  number  nine  face  on  a  number 
six  head,  make  a  dividend  out  of  him,  and  imagine 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  287 


that  is  the  end  of  the  matter.  They  overlook  that 
this  man  will  beget  children  in  his  image — two  or 
three  times  as  many  as  the  American — and  that 
these  children  wiU  in  turn  beget  children.  They 
chuckle  at  having  opened  an  inexhaustible  store 
of  cheap  tools  and,  lo!  the  American  people  is 
being  altered  for  all  time  by  these  tools.  Once 
before,  captains  of  industry  took  a  hand  in  making 
this  people.  Colonial  planters  imported  Africans 
to  hoe  in  the  sun,  to  ''develop"  the  tobacco,  in- 
digo, and  rice  plantations.  Then,  as  now,  business- 
minded  men  met  with  contempt  the  protests  of  a 
few  idealists  against  their  way  of  "building  up 
the  country." 

Those  promoters  of  prosperity  are  dust,  but 
they  bequeathed  a  situation  which  in  four  years 
wiped  out  more  wealth  than  two  hundred  years 
of  slavery  had  built  up,  and  which  presents  to- 
day the  one  unsolvable  problem  in  this  country. 
Without  likening  immigrants  to  negroes,  one  may 
point  out  how  the  latter-day  employer  resembles 
the  old-time  planter  in  his  bUndness  to  the  effects 
of  his  labor  policy  upon  the  blood  of  the  nation. 

IMMIGRATION"  AND  GOOD  LOOKS 

It  is  reasonable  to  expect  an  early  falling  off 
in  the  frequency  of  good  looks  in  the  American 
people.  It  is  unthinkable  that  so  many  persons 
with  crooked  faces,  coarse  mouths,  bad  noses, 
heavy  jaws,  and  low  foreheads  can  mingle  their 
heredity  with  ours  without  making  personal 
beauty  yet  more  rare  among  us  than  it  actually  is. 


288    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


So  much  ugliness  is  at  last  bound  to  work  to  the 
surface.  One  ought  to  see  the  horror  on  the  face 
of  a  fine-looking  Italian  or  Hungarian  consul  when 
one  asks  him  innocently,  "Is  the  physiognomy  of 
these  immigrants  typical  of  your  people?"  That 
the  new  immigrants  are  inferior  in  looks  to  the 
old  immigrants  may  be  seen  by  comparing,  in  a 
Labor  Day  parade,  the  faces  of  the  cigar-makers 
and  the  garment-workers  with  those  of  the  team- 
sters, piano-movers  and  steam-fitters. 

Even  aside  from  the  pouring  in  of  the  ill- 
favored,  the  crossing  of  the  heterogeneous  is 
bound  to  lessen  good  looks  among  us.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  the  beauty  which  has  often  excited  the 
admiration  of  European  visitors  has  shown  itself 
most  in  communities  of  comparative  purity  of 
blood.  New  England,  Virginia,  and  Kentucky 
have  been  renowned  for  their  beautiful  women, 
but  not  the  commonwealths  with  a  mixed  popula- 
tion. It  is  in  the  less-heterogeneous  parts  of  the 
Middle  West,  such  as  Indiana  and  Kansas,  that 
one  is  struck  by  the  number  of  comely  women. 

Twenty-four  years  ago  the  greatest  living 
philosopher  advised  inquiring  Japanese  states- 
men to  interdict  marriages  of  Japanese  with  for- 
eigners, on  the  ground  that  the  crossings  of  the 
too-unlike  produce  human  beings  with  a  "chaotic 
constitution."  Herbert  Spencer  went  on  to  say, 
"When  the  varieties  mingled  diverge  beyond  a 
certain  slight  degree,  the  result  is  inevitably  a 
bad  one."  The  greatest  students  of  hybridism 
to-day  confirm  Spencer 's  surmise.    The  fusing  of 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  289 


American  with  German  and  Scandinavian  immi- 
grants was  only  a  reblending  of  kindred  stocks, 
for  Angles,  Jutes,  Danes,  and  Normans  were 
wrought  of  yore  into  the  fiber  of  the  English 
breed.  But  the  human  varieties  being  collected 
in  this  country  by  the  naked  action  of  economic 
forces  are  too  dissimilar  to  blend  without  produc- 
ing a  good  many  faces  of  a  chaotic  constitution." 
Just  as  there  is  a  wide  difference  in  looks  be- 
tween Bretons  and  Normans,  Dutch  and  Hanover- 
ians, the  Chinese  of  Hu-peh  and  the  Chinese  of 
Fukien,  so  broad  contrasts  in  good  looks  may  in 
time  appear  between  the  pure-blood  parts  of  our 
country  and  those  which  have  absorbed  a  motley 
assortment  of  immigrants. 

STATUEE  AND  PHYSIQUE 

Although  the  Slavs  stand  up  well,  our  South 
Europeans  run  to  low  stature.  A  gang  of  Italian 
navvies  filing  along  the  street  present,  by  their 
dwarfishness,  a  curious  contrast  to  other  people. 
The  Portuguese,  the  Greeks,  and  the  Syrians  are, 
from  our  point  of  view,  undersized.  The  Hebrew 
immigrants  are  very  poor  in  physique.  The 
average  of  Hebrew  women  in  New  York  is  just 
over  five  feet,  and  the  young  women  in  the  gar- 
ment factories,  although  well  developed,  appear 
to  be  no  taller  than  native  girls  of  thirteen. 

On  the  physical  side  the  Hebrews  are  the  polar 
opposite  of  our  pioneer  breed.  Not  only  are  they 
undersized  and  weak-muscled,  but  they  shun  bod- 
ily activity  and  are  exceedingly  sensitive  to  pain. 


290    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


Says  a  settlement  worker:  "You  can't  make  boy 
scouts  out  of  the  Jews.  There 's  not  a  troop  of 
them  in  all  New  York,"  Another  remarks: 
''They  are  absolute  babies  about  pain.  Their 
young  fellows  will  scream  with  a  hard  lick." 
Students  observe  that  husky  young  Hebrews  on 
the  foot-ball  team  lack  grit,  and  will  "take  on" 
if  they  are  bumped  into  hard.  A  young  Ontario 
miner  noticed  that  his  Hebrew  comrades  groaned 
and  wept  over  the  hardships  of  the  trail.  "They 
kept  swapping  packs  with  me,  imagining  my  pack 
must  be  lighter  because  I  wasn't  hollering." 

Natural  selection,  frontier  life,  and  the  example 
of  the  red  man  produced  in  America  a  type  of 
great  physical  self-control,  gritty,  uncomplaining, 
merciless  to  the  body  through  fear  of  becoming 
"soft."  To  this  roaming,  hunting,  exploring, 
adventurous  breed  what  greater  contrast  is  there 
than  the  denizens  of  the  Ghetto?  The  second 
generation,  to  be  sure,  overtop  their  parents  and 
are  going  in  for  athletics.  Hebrews  under  Irish 
names  abound  in  the  prize-ring,  and  not  long  ago 
a  sporting  editor  printed  the  item,  "  Jack  Sulli- 
van received  a  letter  in  Yiddish  yesterday  from 
his  sister."  Still,  it  will  be  long  before  they  pro- 
duce the  stoical  type  who  blithely  fares  forth  into 
the  wilderness,  portaging  his  canoe,  poling  it 
against  the  current,  wading  in  the  torrents,  living 
on  bacon  and  beans,  and  sleeping  on  the  ground, 
all  for  "fun"  or  "to  keep  hard." 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  291 


VITALITY 

"The  Slavs,"  remarks  a  physician,  "are  immune 
to  certain  kinds  of  dirt.  They  can  stand  what 
would  kill  a  white  man. ' '  The  women  do  not  have 
puerperal  fever,  as  our  women  would  under  their 
conditions.  The  men  violate  every  sanitary  law, 
yet  survive.  The  Slavs  come  from  a  part  of  the 
world  in  which  never  more  than  a  third  of  the 
children  have  grown  up.  In  every  generation, 
dirt,  ignorance,  superstition,  and  lack  of  medical 
attention  have  winnowed  out  all  hut  the  sturdiest. 
Among  Americans,  two-thirds  of  the  children 
grow  up,  which  means  that  we  keep  alive  many  of 
the  tenderer,  who  would  certainly  have  perished 
in  the  Slavic  world.  There  is,  however,  no  illu- 
sion more  grotesque  than  to  suppose  that  our  peo- 
ple is  to  be  rejuvenated  by  absorbing  these  mil- 
lions of  hardy  peasantry,  that,  to  quote  a  cham- 
pion of  free  immigration,  "The  new-comers  in 
America  wiU  bring  fresh,  vigorous  blood  to  a 
rather  sterile  and  inbred  stock."  The  fact  is  that 
the  immigrant  stock  quickly  loses  here  its  distinc- 
tive ruggedness.  The  physicians  practising 
among  rural  Poles  notice  a  great  saving  of  infant 
life  under  American  conditions.  Says  one:  "I 
see  immigrant  women  and  their  grown  daughters 
having  infants  at  the  same  time,  and  the  children 
of  the  former  will  die  of  the  things  that  the  chil- 
dren of  the  latter  get  well  of.  The  same  holds 
when  the  second  generation  and  the  third  bear 
at  the  same  time.    The  latter  save  their  children 


292    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


better  than  the  former."  The  result  is  a  marked 
softening  of  fiber  between  the  immigrant  women 
and  the  granddaughters.  Among  the  latter  are 
many  of  a  finer,  but  frailer,  mold,  who  would  be 
ruined  in  health  if  they  worked  in  the  field  the 
third  day  after  confinement,  as  grandmother  did. 
In  the  old  country  there  were  very  few  of  this 
type  who  survived  infancy  in  a  peasant  family. 

There  is,  then,  no  lasting  revitalization  from 
this  tide  of  life.  If  our  people  has  become  weak, 
no  transfusion  of  peasants  will  set  it  on  its  feet 
again;  for  their  blood  too,  soon  thins.  The 
trouble,  if  you  call  it  that,  is  not  with  the  Amer- 
ican people,  but  with  the  wide  diffusion  among  us 
of  a  civilized  manner  of  life.  Where  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  mitigated  not  merely  for  the  upper 
quarter  of  society,  as  formerly  in  the  Old  World, 
but  for  the  upper  three-quarters,  as  in  this  and 
other  democratic  countries,  the  effects  of  keeping 
alive  the  less  hardy  are  bound  to  show.  The  rem- 
edy for  the  alleged  degeneration  of  our  stock  is 
simple,  but  drastic.  If  we  want  only  constitutions 
that  can  stand  hardship  and  abuse,  let  us  treat 
the  young  as  they  are  treated  in  certain  poverty- 
stricken  parts  of  Russia.  Since  the  mother  is 
obhged  to  pass  the  day  at  work  in  distant 
fields,  the  nursling  of  a  few  months  is  left  alone, 
crawling  about  on  the  dirt  floor  of  the  hut  and 
comforting  itself,  when  it  cries  from  hunger, 
by  sucking  poultices  of  chewed  bread  tied  to  its 
hands  and  feet. 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  293 


MORALITY 

That  the  Mediterranean  peoples  are  morally 
below  the  races  of  northern  Europe  is  as  certain 
as  any  social  fact.  Even  when  they  were  dirty, 
ferocious  barbarians,  these  blonds  were  truth- 
tellers.  Be  it  pride  or  awkwardness  or  lack  of 
imagination  or  fair-play  sense,  something  has  held 
them  back  from  the  nimble  lying  of  the  southern 
races.  Immigration  officials  find  that  the  dif- 
ferent peoples  are  as  day  and  night  in  point  of 
veracity,  and  report  vast  trouble  in  extracting 
the  truth  from  certain  brunet  nationalities. 

Some  champions  of  immigration  have  become 
broad-minded  enough  to  think  small  of  the  cardi- 
nal virtues.  The  Syrians,  on  Boston  testimony, 
took  "great  pains  to  cheat  the  charitable  soci- 
eties" and  are  "extremely  untrustworthy  and  un- 
reliable." Their  defender,  however,  after  ad- 
mitting their  untruthfulness,  explains  that  their 
lying  is  altruistic.  If,  at  the  fork  of  a  road,  you 
ask  a  Syrian  your  way,  he  will,  in  sheer  transport 
of  sympathy,  study  you  to  discover  what  answer 
will  most  please  you.  * '  The  Anglo-Saxon  variety 
of  truthfulness,"  she  adds,  "is  not  a  Syrian 
characteristic";  but,  "if  truthfulness  includes 
loyalty,  ready  self-denial  to  promote  a  cause  that 
seems  right,  the  Syrian  is  to  that  extent  truth- 
ful." Quoting  a  Syrian's  admission  that  his  fel- 
low-merchants pay  their  debts  for  their  credit's 
sake,  but  will  cheat  the  customer,  she  comments, 
"This,  however,  does  not  seem  to  be  exclusively 


294    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


a  Syrian  vice."  To  such  miserable  paltering 
does  a  sickly  sentimentality  lead. 

In  southern  Europe,  team-work  along  all  lines 
is  limited  by  selfishness  and  bad  faith.  Profes- 
sor Fairchild  notes  "the  inveterate  factionalism 
and  commercial  dishonesty  so  characteristic  of 
the  [Greek]  race,"  "the  old  dishonesty  and  in- 
ability to  work  together."  "One  of  the  maxims 
of  Greek  business  life,  translated  into  the  Amer- 
ican vemacalar,  is  'Put  out  the  other  fellow's 
eye.'  "  "These  people  seemed  incapable  of 
carying  on  a  large  cooperative  business  with  har- 
mony and  success." 

Nothing  less  than  verminous  is  the  readiness  of 
the  southern  Europeans  to  prey  upon  their  fel- 
lows. Never  were  British  or  Scandinavian  im- 
migrants so  bled  by  fellow-countrymen  as  are 
South  Italian,  Greek  and  Semitic  immigrants. 
Their  spirit  of  mutual  helpfulness  saved  them 
from  padrone,  "banker,"  and  Black  Hand. 
Among  our  South  Italians  this  spirit  shines 
out  only  when  it  is  a  question  of  shielding  from 
American  justice  some  cut-throat  of  their  own 
race.  The  Greek  is  full  of  tricks  to  skin  the 
greenhorn.  A  grocer  will  warn  fellow-country- 
men who  have  just  established  themselves  in  his 
town  that  he  will  have  the  police  on  them  for  vio- 
lating municipal  ordinances  unless  they  buy  gro- 
ceries from  him.  The  Greek  mill-hand  sells  the 
greenhorn  a  job,  and  takes  his  chances  on  the 
foreman  giving  the  man  work.    A  Greek  who 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  295 


knows  a  little  English  will  get  a  Greek  peddler 
arrested  in  order  that  he  may  get  the  interpre- 
ter's fee.  The  Greek  boot-black  who  has  freed 
himself  from  his  serfdom,  instead  of  showing  up 
the  system,  starts  a  place  of  his  own,  and  exploits 
his  help  as  mercilessly  as  ever  he  was  exploited. 

The  Northerners  seem  to  surpass  the  southern 
Europeans  in  innate  ethical  endowment.  Com- 
parison of  their  behavior  in  marine  disasters 
shows  that  discipline,  sense  of  duty,  presence  of 
mind,  and  consideration  for  the  weak  are  much 
more  characteristic  of  northern  Europeans.  The 
southern  Europeans,  on  the  other  hand,  are  apt, 
in  their  terror,  to  forget  discipline,  duty,  women, 
children,  everything  but  the  saving  of  their  own 
lives.  In  shipwreck  it  is  the  exceptional  North- 
erner who  forgets  his  duty,  and  the  exceptional 
Southerner  who  is  bound  by  it.  The  suicide  of 
Italian  officers  on  board  the  doomed  Monte  Ta- 
bor, the  Notice,  and  the  Ajace,  is  in  striking  con- 
trast to  the  sense  of  responsibility  of  the  North- 
erners in  charge  of  the  Cimhria,  the  Geiser,  the 
Strathcona,  and  the  City  of  Paris.  Compare  the 
mad  struggle  for  the  boats  among  the  southern 
Europeans  on  La  Bourgogne,  the  Ailsa,  and  the 
Utopia,  with  the  self-possession  of  the  Scandina- 
vian emigrants  on  the  Waesland  and  the  Danmark, 
and  the  consideration  for  women  and  children 
shown  on  the  sinking  Mohegan,  the  Waesland,  and 
the  Titanic.  Among  all  nationalities  the  Amer- 
icans bear  the  palm  for  coolness,  orderly  saving  of 
life,  and  consideration  for  the  weak  in  shipwreck, 


296    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


but  they  will  lose  these  traits  in  proportion  as 
they  absorb  excitable  mercurial  blood  from  south- 
ern Europe. 

NATUKAL,  ABILITY 

The  performance  of  the  foreign-born  ajid  their 
children  after  they  have  had  access  to  American 
opportunities  justifies  the  democrat's  faith  that 
latent  capacity  exists  all  through  the  humbler 
strata  of  society.  On  the  other  hand,  it  also  con- 
firms the  aristocrat's  insistence  that  social  ranks 
correspond  somewhat  with  the  grades  of  natural 
ability  existing  within  a  people.  The  descend- 
ants of  Europe's  lowly  are  to  be  met  in  all  the 
upper  levels  of  American  society,  but  not  so  fre- 
quently as  the  descendents  of  those  who  were  high 
or  rising  in  the  land  they  left. 

In  respect  to  the  value  it  contains,  a  stream  of 
immigrants  may  be  representative,  super-repre- 
sentative, or  sub -representative  of  the  home  peo- 
ple. When  it  is  a  fair  sample,  it  is  representa- 
tive; when  it  is  richer  in  wheat  and  poorer  in 
chaff,  it  is  super-representative;  when  the  reverse 
is  the  case,  it  is  sub-representative.  What  counts 
here,  of  course,  is  not  the  value  the  immigrants 
may  have  acquired  by  education  or  experience, 
but  that  fundamental  worth  which  does  not  de- 
pend on  opportunity,  and  which  may  be  trans- 
mitted to  one's  descendants.  Now,  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge,  it  is  perhaps  risky  to  make 
a  comparison  in  ability  between  the  races  which 
contributed  the  old  immigration  and  those  which 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  297 


are  supplying  the  new  immigration.  Though 
backward,  the  latter  may  contain  as  good  stuff. 
But  it  is  fair  to  assume  that  a  super-representa- 
tive immigration  from  one  stock  is  worth  more 
to  us  than  a  sub-representative  immigration  from 
another  stock,  and  that  an  influx  which  sub-repre- 
sents a  European  people  will  thin  the  blood  of 
the  American  people. 

Many  things  have  decided  whether  Europe 
should  send  America  cream  or  skimmed  milk. 
Religious  or  political  oppression  is  apt  to  drive 
out  the  better  elements.  Racial  oppression  can- 
not be  evaded  by  mere  conformity;  hence  the  emi- 
gration it  sets  up  is  apt  to  be  representative.  An 
unsubdued  and  perilous  land  attracts  the  more 
bold  and  enterprising.  The  seekers  of  home- 
steads include  men  of  better  stuff  than  the  job- 
seekers  attracted  by  high  wages  for  unskilled 
labor.  Only  economic  motives  set  in  motion  the 
sub-common  people,  but  even  in  an  economic  emi- 
gration the  early  stage  brings  more  people  of 
initiative  than  the  later.  The  deeper,  straighter, 
and  smoother  the  channels  of  migration,  the  lower 
the  stratum  they  can  tap. 

It  is  not  easy  to  value  the  early  elements  that 
were  wrought  into  the  American  people.  Often 
a  stream  of  immigration  that  started  with  the 
best  drained  from  the  lower  levels  after  it  had 
worn  itself  a  bed.  It  is  therefore  only  in  a  broad 
way  that  I  venture  to  classify  the  principal  colo- 
nial migrations  as  follows : 

Super-representative:   English  Pilgrims,  Puri- 


298    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


tans,  Quakers,  Catholics,  Scotch  Covenanters, 
French  Huguenots,  German  sectaries. 

Representative:  English  of  Virginia,  Mary- 
land, and  the  Carolinas,  Scotch-Irish,  Scotch 
Highlanders,  Dutch,  and  Swedes. 

Sub-representative:  English  of  early  Georgia, 
transported  English,  eighteenth-century  Ger- 
mans. 

In  our  national  period  the  Germans  of  1848 
stand  out  as  a  super-representative  flow.  The 
Irish  stream  has  been  representative,  as  was  also 
the  early  German  migration.  The  German  inflow 
since  1870  has  brought  us  very  few  of  the  elite 
of  their  people,  and  I  have  already  given  reasons 
for  believing  that  the  Scandinavian  stream  is  not 
altogether  representative.  Our  immigration  from 
Great  Britain  has  distinctly  fallen  off  in  grade 
since  the  chances  in  America  came  to  be  less  at- 
tractive than  those  in  the  British  Empire.  How- 
ever, no  less  an  authority  than  Sir  Richard  Cart- 
wright  thinks  that  "between  1866  and  1896  one- 
third  at  least  of  the  whole  male  population  of 
Canada  between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  forty 
found  their  way  to  the  United  States,"  and  this 
"included  an  immense  percentage  of  the  most 
intelligent  and  adventurous."  To-day  we  recip- 
rocate by  sending  Western  farmers  with  capital 
into  the  Canadian  Northwest.  Our  loss  has 
amounted  to  as  many  as  100,000  in  a  single  year. 

Oppression  is  now  out  of  fashion  over  most  of 
Europe,  and  our  public  lands  are  gone.  Eco- 
nomic motives  more  and*  more  bring  us  immi- 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  299 


grants,  and  such  motives  will  not  uproot  the  edu- 
cated, the  propertied,  the  established,  the  well  con- 
nected. The  children  of  success  are  not  migrat- 
ing, which  means  that  we  get  few  scions  from 
families  of  proved  capacity.  Europe  retains 
most  of  her  brains,  but  sends  multitudes  of  the 
common  and  the  sub-common.  There  is  little  sign 
of  an  intellectual  element  among  the  Magyars, 
Russians,  South  Slavs,  Italians,  Greeks,  or 
Portuguese.  This  does  not  hold,  however,  for 
currents  created  by  race  discrimination  or  oppres- 
sion. The  Armenian,  Syrian,  Finnish,  and  Rus- 
so-Hebrew  streams  seem  representative,  and  the 
first  wave  of  Hebrews  out  of  Russia  in  the  eighties 
was  superior.  The  Slovaks,  German  Poles,  Lith- 
uanians, Esthonians,  and  other  restive  subject 
groups  probably  send  us  a  fair  sample  of  their 
quality. 

EACE  SUICIDE 

The  fewer  brains  they  have  to  contribute,  the 
lower  the  place  immigrants  take  among  us,  and 
the  lower  the  place  they  take,  the  faster  they  mul- 
tiply. In  1890,  in  our  cities,  a  thousand  foreign- 
born  women  could  show  565  children  under  five 
years  of  age  to  309  children  shown  by  a  thousand 
native  women.  By  1900  the  contribution  of  the 
foreign  women  had  risen  to  612,  and  that  of  the 
American  women  had  declined  to  296.  From  such 
figures  some  argue  that  the  "sterile"  Americans 
need  the  immigrants  in  order  to  supply  popula- 
tion.   It  would  be  nearer  the  truth  to  argue  that 


300    THE  OLD  WORLD  IN  THE  NEW 


the  competition  of  low-standard  immigrants  is 
tlie  root  cause  of  the  mysterious  "sterility"  of 
Americans.  Certainly  their  record  down-  to  1830 
proved  the  Americans  to  be  as  fertile  a  race  as 
ever  lived,  and  the  decline  in  their  fertility  coin- 
cides in  time  and  in  locality  with  the  advent  of 
the  immigrant  flood.  In  the  words  of  General 
Francis  A,  Walker,  *'Not  only  did  the  decline  in 
the  native  element,  as  a  whole,  take  place  in  sin- 
gular correspondence  with  the  excess  of  foreign 
arrivals,  but  it  occurred  chiefly  in  just  those  re- 
gions"— "in  those  States  and  in  the  very  coun- 
ties," he  says  elsewhere — "to  which  those  new- 
comers most  frequently  resorted." 

"Our  immigrants,"  says  a  superintendent  of 
charities,  "often  come  here  with  no  standards 
whatever.  In  their  homes  you  find  no  sheets  on 
the  bed,  no  slips  on  the  pillows,  no  cloth  on  the 
table,  and  no  towels  save  old  rags.  Even  in  the 
mud-floor  cabins  of  the  poorest  negroes  of  the 
South  you  find  sheets,  pillow-slips,  and  towels, 
for  by  serving  and  associating  with  the  whites 
the  blacks  have  gained  standards.  But  many  of 
the  foreigners  have  no  means  of  getting  our  home 
standards  after  they  are  here.  No  one  shows 
them.  They  can't  see  into  American  homes,  and 
no  Americans  associate  with  them."  The  Amer- 
icans or  Americanized  immigrants  who  are 
obliged  to  live  on  wages  fixed  by  the  competition 
of  such  people  must  cut  somewhere.  If  they  do 
not  choose  to  ' '  live  in  a  pig-pen  and  bring  up  one 's 
children  like  pigs,"  they  will  save  their  standards 


AMERICAN  AND  IMMIGRANT  BLOOD  303 


by  keeping  down  the  size  of  the  family.  Because 
he  keeps  them  clean,  neatly  dressed,  and  in  school, 
children  are  an  economic  burden  to  the  American. 
Because  he  lets  them  run  wild  and  puts  them  to 
work  early,  children  are  an  asset  to  the  low-stand- 
ard foreigner. 

When  a  more-developed  element  is  obliged  to 
compete  on  the  same  economic  plane  with  a  less- 
developed  element,  the  standards  of  cleanliness 
or  decency  or  education  cherished  by  the  advanced 
element  act  on  it  like  a  slow  poison.  William  does 
not  leave  as  many  children  as  'Tonio,  because  he 
will  not  huddle  his  family  into  one  room,  eat  maca- 
roni off  a  bare  board,  work  his  wife  barefoot  in 
the  field,  and  keep  his  children  weeding  onions  in- 
stead of  at  school.  Even  moral  standards  may 
act  as  poison.  Once  the  women  raisin-packers  at 
Fresno,  California,  were  American-born.  Now 
the  American  women  are  leaving  because  of  the 
low  moral  tone  that  prevails  in  the  working  force 
by  reason  of  the  coming  in  of  foreigners  with 
lax  notions  of  propriety.  The  coarseness  of 
speech  and  beha^dor  among  the  packers  is  giving 
raisin-packing  a  bad  name,  so  that  American 
women  are  quitting  the  work  and  taking  the  next 
best  job.  Thus  the  very  decency  of  the  native  is 
a  handicap  to  success  and  to  fecundity. 

As  they  feel  the  difficulty  of  keeping  up  their 
standards  on  a  Slav  wage,  the  older  immigrant 
stocks  are  becoming  sterile,  even  as  the  old  Amer- 
icans became  sterile.  In  a  generation  complaint 
will  be  heard  that  the  Slavs,  too,  are  shirking  big 


304    THE  OLD  WOELD  IN  THE  NEW 


families,  and  that  we  must  admit  prolific  Per- 
sians, Uzbegs,  and  Bokliariots,  in  order  to  otTset 
the  fatal  sterility  that  attacks  every  race  after 
it  has  become  Americanized.  Very  truly  says  a 
distinguished  economist,  in  praise  of  immigration : 
**The  cost  of  rearing  children  in  the  United  States 
is  rapidly  rising.  In  many,  perhaps  in  most 
cases,  it  is  simpler,  speedier,  and  cheaper  to  im- 
port labor  than  to  breed  it."  In  like  vein  it  is 
said  that  * '  a  healthy  immigrant  lad  of  eighteen  is 
a  clear  $1000  added  to  the  national  wealth  of  the 
United  States." 

Just  so.  *'The  Roman  world  was  laughing 
when  it  died."  Any  couple  or  any  people  that 
does  not  feel  it  has  anything  to  transmit  to  its 
children  may  well  reason  in  such  fashion.  A 
couple  may  reflect,  "It  is  simpler,  speedier,  and 
cheaper  for  us  to  adopt  orphans  than  to  produce 
children  of  our  own."  A  nation  may  reason, 
**Why  burden  ourselves  with  the  rearing  of  chil- 
dren? Let  them  perish  unborn  in  the  womb  of 
time.  The  immigrants  will  keep  up  the  popula- 
tion." A  people  that  has  no  more  respect  for 
its  ancestors  and  no  more  pride  of  race  than  this 
deserves  the  extinction  that  surely  awaits  it. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 


TABLE  I 

ANNUAL.  IMMIGRATION  1820-1913 

Year  ending  Sept.  30 

1820   8,385 

1821   9,127 

1822   6,911 

1823   6,354 

1824   7,912 

1825   10,199 

1826   10,837 

Year  ending  Sept.  30 

1827   18,875 

1828   27,-382 

1829   22,520 

1830   23,322 

1831   22,633 

15  months  ending  Dec.  31 

1832   60,482 

Year  ending  Dec.  31 

1833   58,640 

1834   65,365 

1835   45,374 

1836   76,242 

1837   79,340 

1838   38,914 

1839   68,069 

1840   84,066 

307 


308  APPENDIX 

1841   80,289 

1842   104,565 

9  months  ending  Sept.  30 

1843   52,496 

Year  ending  Sept.  30 

1844   78,615 

1845   114,371 

1846   154,416 

1847   234,968 

1848   226,527 

1849   297,024 

1850   310,004 

3  months  ending  Dec.  31 

1850   59,976 

Year  ending  Dec.  31 

1851   379,466 

1852   371,603 

1853   368,645 

1854   427,833 

1855   200,877 

1856   200,436 

1857   251,306 

1858   123,126 

1859   121,282 

1860   153,640 

1861   91,918 

1862   91,985 

1863   176,282 

1864   193,418 

1865   248,120 

1866   318,568 

1867   315,722 

6  months  ending  June  30 

1868   138,840 


APPENDIX  309 

Year  ending  June  30 

1869   352,768 

1870   387,203 

1871   321,350 

1872   404,806 

1873   459,803 

1874  „   313,339 

1875   227,498 

1876   169,986 

1877   141,857 

1878   138,469 

1879   177,826 

1880   457,257 

1881   669,431 

1882   788,992 

1883.....   603,322 

1884   518,592 

1885   395,346 

1886   334,203 

1887   490,109 

1888   546,889 

1889   444,427 

1890   455,302 

1891   560,319 

1892   623,084 

1893   439,730 

1894   285,631 

1895..   258,536 

1896   343,267 

1897   230,832 

1898...   229,299 

18'99   311,715 

1900   448,572 

1901   487,918 

1902   648,743 


310 


APPENDIX 


1903   857,046 

1904   812,870 

1905  1,026,499 

1906  1,100,735 

1907  1,285,349 

1908   782,870 

1909   751,786 

1910  1,041,570 

1911   878,587 

1912   838,172 

1913  1,197,892 

1914  (11  months)  1,254,548 


TABLE  II 

TOTAL  NUMBER  OP  IMMIGRANTS,  BY  DECADES 

1821-1830    143,439    1871-1880   2,812,191 

1831-1840    599,125    1881-1890   5,246,613 

1841-1850   1,713,251    1891-1900   3,687,561 

1851-1860   2,598,214    1901-1910   8,795,386 

1861-1870   2,314,824 


TABLE  III 

INCREASE  OF  FOREIGN-BORN  IN  POPULATION  BY  DECADES 


Population.  Increase.  Increase. 

Census  Year.       Foreign-Born  Percentage 

1850   2,244,602 

1860                  4,138,697  1,894,095  84.4 

1870                  5,567,229  1,428,532  34.5 

1880                   6,679,943  1,112,714  20.0 

1890                   9,249,560  2,569,617  38.5 

1900                 10,341,276  1,091,716  11.8 

1910                13,343,583  3,129,766  30.6 


APPENDIX 


311 


TABLE  IV 

FOREIGN-BORN  IN  UNITED  STATES  IN  1910 

Per  cent 

Country  of  Birth.  Number.     of  total. 

Total  foreign  bom  13,515,886  100.0 


Europe  11,791,841  87.2 

Noi'thwestern  Europe   6,740,400  49.9 

Great  Britain   1,221,283  9.0 

England    877,719  6.5 

Scotland    261,076  1.9 

Wales   82,488  0.6 

Ireland    1,352,251  10.0 

Germany   2,501,333  18.5 

Scandinavian  countries. . . .  1,250,733  9.3 

Norway   403,877  3.0 

Sweden    665,207  1.9 

Denmark   181,649  1.3 

Netherlands  (Holland),  Bel- 
gium, and  Luxemburg.  . .  172,534  1.3 

Netherlands    120,063  0.9 

Belgium   49,400  0.4 

Luxemburg   3,071 

France    117,418  0.9 

Switzerland    124,848  0.9 

Southern    and  Eastern 

Europe   5,048,583  37.4 

Portugal    59,360  0.4 

Spain    22,108  0.2 

Italy    1,343,125  9.9 

Russia  and  Finland   1,732,462  12.8 

Russia    1,602,782  11.9 

Finland   129,680  1.0 


312 


APPENDIX 


Per  cent 

Country  op  Birth. 

Number. 

of  total. 

4  .  „  TT  .  

1,670,582 

12.4 

1,174,973 

8.7 

495,609 

3.7 

T~>  _  1  1                            '  1 

220,946 

1.6 

65,923 

0.5 

11,498 

0.1 

4,639 

5,374 

101,282 

0.7 

Turkey  in  Europe  

32,230 

0.2 

2,858 

A  _  •  _ 

191,484 

1.4 

56,756 

0.4 

67,7U 

0.5 

4,664 

59,729 

0.4 

2,591 

1,489,231 

II.O 

Canada  and  Newioundland . 

1,209,717 

9.0 

one    /"V  0  0 

385,083 

2.8 

819,554 

6.1 

5,080 

An  CQC 

221,915 

1.6 

Central  and  South  America 

9,964 

0.1 

All  other  

43.330 

0.3 

314 


APPENDIX 


TABLE  V 

PEE  CENT.  OP  IMMIGRANTS  FROM  NORTHERN  AND  WESTERN 
EUROPE  AND  FROM  SOUTHERN  AND  EASTERN 
EUROPE,  1820  TO  1910 

Northern  Southern  Total  Other 


and  and       from  specified 

Period.         Western.  Eastern.  Europe,  countries. 

1820-1830   87.0  2.9  89.9  10.1 

1831-1840   92.5  1.1  93.7  6.3 

1841-1850   95.9  .3  96.2  3.8 

1851-1860   94.6  .8  95.5  4.5 

1861-1870   88.5  1.5  89.9  10.1 

1871-1880   73.7  7.1  80.8  19.2 

1881-1890   72.0  18.3  90.3  9.7 

1891-1900   44.8  52.8  97.5  2.5 

1901-1910   21.8  71.9  93.7  6.3 


TABLE  VI 

old  and  new  immigration  compared  with  respect  to 
ability  of  the  foreign-born  to  read,  by  race  * 
(study  of  employees) 


Per 

Per 

cent. 

cent. 

able 

able 

Old  Immi- 

to 

New  Immi- 

to 

gration. 

read. 

gration. 

read. 

Canadian,  French  . 

. .  88.1 

78.1 

Canadian,  other  .  , . 

98.9 

Croatian  

70.9 

Dutch   

97.6 

Greek   

80.5 

English  

98.8 

Hebrew,  Russian  . . 

..  93.1 

98.0 

Hebrew,  other  

..  92.5 

*  Vol.  I,  p.  443.  Abstracts  of  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission. 


APPENDIX 


315 


Per 
cent. 

able 

Old  Immi-  to 
GEATiox.  read. 

Irish    95.8 

Scotch   99.5 

Swedish    99.8 

Welsh    98.1 


Per 
cent, 
able 

New  Immi-  to 
GRATiox.  read. 

Italian,  North  83.3 

Italian,  South  67.5 

Lithuanian   77.3 

Magyar   91.0 

Polish    79.9 

Portugnese   47.5 

Roumanian   82.6 

Eussian   74.5 

Euthenian   65.8 

Servian   71.3 

Slovak   84.4 

Slovenian   87.5 

Spanish   98.1 

Syrian   63.6 


TABLE  VII 

OLD  AXD  KEW  IMMIGRATIOX  COMPARED  WITH  RESPECT  TO 
FOREIGN-BORIs  HUSBAXDS  REPORTING  WIFE 
ABROAD,  BY  RACE.* 

(study  OF  employees) 

Per  cent  Per  cent 

Reporting  Exporting 

Old  Immi-             Wife  New  Immi-  Wife 

GRATIOX.          Abroad.  gratiok.  Abroad. 

Canadian,  French  ....  1.5    Bulgarian  90.0 

Dutch    3.8    Croatian  59.3 

EngUsh   3.4    Greek  74.7 

*  VoL  I,  p.  460.  Abstracts  of  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission. 


316 


APPENDIX 


Per  cent 
Reporting 


Old  Immi-  Wife 
GRATiON,  Abroad. 

German   4.3 

Irish    1.2 

Scotch   3.2 

Swedish   2.9 

Welsh    1.4 


Per  cent 
Reporting 


New  Immi-  Wife 
GRATION.  Abroad. 

Hebrew,  Russian  12.5 

Italian,  North  31.6 

Italian,  South  36.9 

Lithuanian  23.3 

Magyar  43.3 

Polish   23.0 

Portuguese  15.9 

Roumanian  73.9 

Russian  45.5 

Servian  64.5 

Slovak  34.2 

Slovenian  33.7 


TABLE  VIII 


old  and  new  immigration  compared  with  respect  to 
ability  to  speak  english.* 
(study  of  employees) 


Old  Immigration. 
Nationality.      Per  cent. 

Danish  96.5 

Dutch   86.1 

French   68.6 

German  87.5 

Norwegian   96.9 

Swedish  94.7 

Average  82.2 


New  Immigration. 
Nationality.      Per  cent. 

Bulgarian  20.3 

Croatian  50.9 

Greek   33.5 

South  Italian  48.7 

Lithuanian  51.3 

Macedonian   21.1 

Magyar  46.4 

Montenegrin  38.0 

Polish   43.5 


*  Vol.  I,  p.  477.  Abstracts  of  Reports  of  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission. 


APPENDIX 


317 


Old  Immigration.  New  Immigration. 


Nationality.      Per  cent.       Nationality.      Per  cent. 

Roumanian  33.3 

Euthenian  36.8 

Russian  43.6 

Servian  41.2 

Slovak  55.6 

Slovenian  51.7 

Syrian  54.6 

Turkish  22.5 


Average  . . . . . .  „  .40.8 


TABLE  IX 

FOREIGN-BORN  IN  URBAN  AND  RURAL.  COMMUNITIES,  1910 


Old  Immigration.  New  Immigration. 


Per 

Per 

Per 

Per 

Country 

Cent 

Cent 

Country 

Cent 

Cent 

of  Birth. 

Urban. 

Rural. 

of  Birth. 

Urban. 

Rural. 

Belgium  .  . . 

59.6 

40.4 

Austria  ,  , 

72.4 

27.6 

Denmark  . . 

.  .48.3 

51.7 

Balkan  States. 50.9 

49.1 

England  . . 

.  .72.6 

27.4 

Finland  . 

50. 

50. 

France  ,  ,  . , 

69.9 

30.1 

71.4 

28.6 

Germany  . . 

.  .66.7 

33.3 

Hungary  . 

...77.3 

22.7 

Holland 

54.9 

45.1 

Italy 

78.1 

21.9 

Ireland  . .  . . 

84.7 

15.3 

Portugal  . 

...69.6 

30.4 

Norway  ,  . 

42.2 

57.8 

Roumania 

. .  .91.9 

8.1 

Scotland 

72.4 

27.6 

Russia 

87. 

13. 

Sweden 

60.6 

39.4 

Turkey, 

i  n 

Switzerland 

..53.9 

46.1 

Asia  ,  . 

86.7 

13.3 

Turkey,  in 

Eu- 

"\ 

79.5 

20.5 

318 


APPENDIX 


FOREIGN  WHITE  STOCK,  BY  PRINCIPAL 
COUNTRIES  OF  ORIGIN:  1910. 


MKO-rOHS 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Ability,  natural,  10,  12,  13; 
Irish,  40-44;  Germans,  50, 
58,  64;  Scandinavians,  83-85; 
Italians,  113,  114;  Slavs,  138, 
139;  Hebrews,  157-164; 
Finns,  169;  Portuguese,  176; 
Levantines,  190,  193;  foreign- 
born,  285-287,  296-299. 

Abstractness,  Hebrew,  159-160. 

Agriculture,  German  immi- 
grants in,  52-53,  62;  Scan- 
dinavians, 73-74,  86;  Ital- 
ians, 103-104;  Slavs,  126- 
127;  Hebrews,  147,  160; 
Finns,  169;  Magyars,  174; 
Portuguese,  181 ;  foreign- 
born,  195,  202-204. 

Alcoholism,  Irish,  32-33;  Ger- 
man, 60-61 ;  Scandinavian, 
72-73;  comparative,  104-105; 
Slavic,  127-128,  229;  Fin- 
nish, 169-170;  Magyar,  175; 
Levantine,  190;  foreign-born, 
215,  229,  255. 

American  traits,  23,  290,  295- 
296. 

Americanism,  origins  of,  22-23. 

Anti-semitism,  164,  165. 

Assimilation,  of  Germans,  49- 
52;  of  Scandinavians,  75-81; 
of  Italians,  111-112,  213;  of 
Slavs,  134-138;  of  Hebrews, 
154,  165-167;  of  Finns,  170; 
of  Magyars,  175;  of  Portu- 
guese, 182;  of  Levantines, 
194;  of  foreign-born,  245, 
250-254,  279-281,  300-303. 

"Assistance"  for  naturalized 
voters,  271. 

Attention  to  details,  compara- 
tive, 44,  66. 

Avarice,  34,  150-155,  182-183, 
188-193,  244,  246,  303. 


Azorean  immigrants,  176,  179, 
181. 

Balch,  Professor,  quoted,  127. 
Bankruptcy,  fraudulent,  150. 
Bar,  immigrants  at  the,  39,  40, 

41,  89,  153. 
Bargain,  the  individual,  193. 
Bath  houses,  Finnish,  169. 
Bingham,  Gen.,  quoted,  108-111. 
Bohemian     immigrants,  123, 

124,  126,  134,  135,  138,  139, 

220,  252,  253. 
"Boss,"  methods  of  the,  269- 

275. 

Boston,  29,  244,  260. 
Bound  boys,  Greek,  187-190. 
Bremer,  Frederika,  quoted,  69. 
Browning,  quoted,  106. 
Bryce,  James,  quoted,  51. 
Bushee,  Dr.,   quoted,  29,  145, 
180,  244. 


Cahan,  Abram,  cited,  164. 
Camorra,  the,  107. 
Canadian  immigrants,  182,  253, 
298. 

Cape  Cod  Portuguese,  179. 
Cape  Verde  immigrants,  168, 
179. 

Capitalists  and  immigration, 
198,  201,  210,  213-219,  286, 
287. 

Cartwright,       Sir  Richard, 

quoted,  298. 
Caste  spirit,   growth  of,  216, 

219,  234-235. 
Caterers,  Greek  immigrants  as, 

184,  187. 
"Cavaliers,"  in  Virginia,  7. 
Celtic   race  traits,  39-44,  64, 

85-89. 


322 


INDEX 


Charity -seekers,  immigrants  as, 
Irish,  29;  Germans,  59;  Ital- 
ians, 117,  243;  Hebrews,  149; 
Magyars,  173;  Syrians,  293; 
foreign-born,  105,  240-245. 

Child  delinquency,  245-246. 

Child  exploitation,  112,  127, 
137,  157,  180,  181,  187-190, 
244,  246,  247,  303. 

Children,  proportion  of,  22. 

Chinese  immigrants,  111,  226. 

Cicero,  on  the  Jews,  143. 

Cities,  immigrants  in,  76,  112, 
126,  145,  182,  202,  239-240, 
244,  260,  282. 

Citizenship,  interest  of  immi- 
grants in  acquiring,  101,  112, 
136,  170,  175,  181-182,  264- 
266,  269-273. 

Civil  War,  tlie,  13,  41,  58. 

Clannishness  of  immigrants, 
Germans,  54,  57;  Italians, 
112,  Slavs,  136-137;  He- 
brews, 154,  166-167;  Portu- 
guese, 182;  Le\'antines,  193- 
194;  Irish,  260-263;  foreign- 
born,  253. 

Clericalism,  123,  135,  136,  252- 
253,  279-280. 

Coal  miners,  wages  of,  213. 

Colonies,  Hebrew  agricultural, 
147. 

Colonization,    of  immigrants, 

203-204. 
Commercialization,    153,  238, 

250. 

Commercialized  immmigration, 
183-4,  195-197,  204,  226. 

Congestion,  of  Irish,  30 ;  of  Ger- 
mans, 60;  of  Scandinavians, 
76;  of  Italians,  112,  117-118; 
of  Slavs,  126;  of  Hebrews, 
145;  of  Magyars,  173-174; 
of  Portuguese,  180;  of  Levan- 
tines 194;  of  foreign-born, 
238-240,  244,  300-303. 

Convict  element  in  the  Colonies, 
8-9. 

Cost  of  living,  causes  of  high, 

201-202. 
Courage,  30,  125-126,  262,  295. 
Crises  and  immigration,  222. 


Cranberry  pickers,  179. 

Criminality,  Irish,  33,  34;  Ger- 
man, 61;  Greek,  62;  Scandin- 
avian, 72;  Italian,  98,  101, 
106-111;  Slavic,  129;  He- 
brew, 34,  62,  155-157;  Fin- 
nish, 33,  169,  Magyar,  175; 
Portuguese,  175-176. 

Criminals,  elimination  of,  in 
the  Colonies,  9. 

Crossing,  effects  of,  288-289. 

Cumings,  quoted,  22. 

Dalmatians  in  horticulture, 
203. 

Danish  immigrants,  74,  81. 

Deforestation,  203. 

Democracy,  immigrants  and,  42, 
54-57,  '76,  91-92,  119,  136, 
158,  256,  263,  264,  269,  276- 
281. 

Deutschtum  in  America,  50-51, 
76. 

Displacement,  industrial,  207- 
209. 

Dutch  immigrants,  4,  70,  298. 

Economic  character  of  present 
immigration,  183-184,  195- 
197,  225,  298,  299. 

Education,  interest  of  immi- 
grants in,  79,  98,  112,  136, 
148,  157-159,  170,  181,  189, 
190,  236,  246,  251-254. 

Elimination,  16-20,  290-292. 

Emigration-promoting,  195-197, 
226. 

Emigration  to  Canada,  298. 

Emotional  instability  of  Ital- 
ians, 118-119. 

English  immigrants,  3-9,  297, 
298. 

English,  ability  to  speak,  76, 
112,  136-137,  169,  176,  236- 
237,  253-254. 

Ethical  endowment,  race  con- 
trasts in,  293-295. 

Fairchild,  Professor,  quoted, 
184,  294. 

Family  size,  21-23,  30,  47,  71- 
72,  127,  130-134,  136,  139, 
236,  244,  287,  292,  299-304. 


INDEX 


323 


Fecundity,  early  American,  21- 
23;  Irish,  26,  29;  Scandi- 
navian, 71-72;  Italian,  95; 
Slavic,  130-134,  136,  139- 
140;  Portuguese,  180;  for- 
eign-born, 236,  287j  299-304. 

Ferrero,  quoted,  280. 

Feudalism,  industrial,  214,  215; 
political,  269-272. 

Finnish  immigrants,  168,  173, 
299. 

Foreign   stock,   proportion  of, 

239-240,  282-285. 
"Forty-eighters,"   the,  47,  50, 

57,  64. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  quoted,  11. 
French  immigrants,  10,  14,  62, 
298. 

Frontier,  selective  influence  of 
the,  20-23. 

Galician  Jews,  degradation  of, 

146,  165. 
Gambling,  98,  105,  156. 
Genoese,  111. 

German  immigrants,  10,  17, 
46-66;  numbers,  46-48;  mo- 
tives of  emigration,  46-48; 
distribution,  49;  assimila- 
tion, 49,  52;   influence,  52- 

58,  79;  drinking  customs, 
53;  conviviality,  54;  politics, 
54-55,  259,  262,  263,  276; 
free-thinking,  57-58,  252 ; 
economic  condition,  59-60; 
alcoholism,  60-61;  criminal- 
ity, 61-62;  occupations,  35, 
36,  41,  62-63;  traits,  29,  32, 
63-66,  73,  81,  83,  91,  149, 
160,  238;  illiteracy,  70;  in 
science,  39,  84;  in  agricul- 
ture, 44,  52,  53,  62,  86,  202, 
260;  race  affinities,  101;  in 
music,  103;  mortality,  113; 
displacement,  220;  quality, 
298. 

Germany,  conditions  in,  48,  225, 
280. 

Ghetto,  the,  145,  149,  290. 
Good  looks,  among  immigrants, 

85,  113,  179,  193,  285,  286- 

289. 


Grant,  Gen.,  quoted,  164. 
Greek  immigrants,  62,  182-190, 

214,  236,  238,  243,  289,  294, 

299. 

Greek  physicians,  memorial  of, 
189. 

Gregariousness,  Italian,  117- 
118;  Hebrew,  145;  Levan- 
tine, 194. 


Hebrew  immigrants,  numbers, 
143,  190;  sobriety,  61;  pov- 
erty, 30,  180;  quality,  145, 
146,  299;  occupation,  146- 
148;  morals,  149-155;  crime, 
34,  62,  155-157;  children, 
114,  245;  traits,  31,  118,  157- 
164,  289-290,  294;  in  poli- 
tics, 148,  158,  263,  274; 
prospects,  164-167. 

Helmold,  quoted,  120-121. 

Heterogeneity,  effects  of,  229, 
276-280. 

Horticulture,  immigrants  in, 
104,  187,  202,  203. 

Honesty,  German,  64—65;  Scan- 
dinavian, 72,  83,  91;  Finnisli, 
169;  Magyar,  173;  North 
European,  294. 

Housing  of  immigrants,  26,  30, 
60,  76,  112,  117,  126,  145, 
169,  173,  174,  180,  216-222, 
244,  300,  301. 

Huguenot  immigrants,  10,  14, 
298. 

Hungarian  Jews,  173. 


Iceland,  67. 

Idealism,  3-4,  50,  57,  64,  81,  91, 
149,  170,  269. 

Illiteracy,  immigrant,  70;  Ital- 
ian, 98;  Slavic,  124,  136,  138; 
Hebrew,  145;  Magyar,  174; 
Portuguese,  176;  foreign- 
born,  228,  230-233. 

Immagination,  Celtic,  40-41; 
Slavic,  138;  Hebrew,  159; 
Scandinavian  lack  of,  85-89. 

Immigration  Commission, 
quoted,  107,  135,  140,  189. 


324 


INDEX 


Immigration  policy,  Jewish  ef- 
forts to  control,  144-145, 
150. 

Immodesty,  228. 
Independent,  the,  quoted,  237. 
Industry,    immigrants    in,  35, 

62-63,  75,  125-126,  148,  174, 

179-201,  207-209,  215-216. 
Infant  mortality,  130,  133,  228, 

291,  292. 
Inquisition,  the,  in  Mexico,  14. 
Insanity,   Irish,   28;  German, 

61;  Scandinavian,  70;  among 

the  foreign-born,  249-250. 
Instability     of  employment, 

growing,  221,  222. 
Ireland,  conditions  in,  26-28; 

early  discrimination  against, 

31. 

Irish  immigrants,  24-45;  num- 
bers, 24-25 ;  motives  to  emi- 
grate, 25-26;  quality,  26-28, 
298 ;  economic  condition,  28- 
32;  pauperism,  29-30;  un- 
thrift,  29-31;  alcoholism,  32- 
33,  60;  criminality.,  33-34; 
loyalty,  34;  occupations,  35- 
39,  220;  progress,  3.5-39,  63; 
gifts,  40-45;  traits,  40-5, 
64,  89,  158,  159;  fecundity, 
71,  133;  illiteracy,  70;  skill, 
62;  in  agriculture,  202;  dis- 
placement, 207 ;  in  politics, 
41,  42,  91,  135.  148,  259- 
263,  272;  in  science,  84;  as- 
similation, 49. 

Italian-American  Civic  League, 
112. 

Italian  Immigrants,  distribu- 
tion, 96 ;  social  characteris- 
tics, 61,  70,  97,  234,  236, 
238;  types,  97-101;  occupa- 
tions, 102-104,  207,  208,  213, 
220;  vices,  104-106;  crime, 
33-34,  62,  72,  106-111,  129; 
assimilation,  111-112;  abil- 
ity, 113-117;  traits,  117-119, 
150,  219,  243;  poverty,  180, 
244;  in  agriculture,  103-104, 
181,  202-203;  in  politics, 
271,  275,  276;  quality,  289. 
293-295,  299. 


Job-buying,  by  immigrants,  198, 
214. 

Journalism,  immigrants  in,  41, 

81,  135,  146,  276. 
Judaism,  165-167. 

Kidnapping,  for  the  Colonies, 
8. 

Kollar,  quoted,  128. 

Labor    organizations,    41,  89, 

209-210,  235. 
Labor,  political  weight  of,  266. 
Lawlessness,  106-111,  150-157. 
Levantine  immigrants,  190-194, 

299. 

Like-mindedness,  value  of  polit- 
ical, 276-280. 

Lithuanian  immigrants,  62,  70, 
124,  134,  140,  208,  230,  252, 
254. 

Litigiousness.  Finnish,  169.  2 
Log  houses,  Finnish,  168. 
Lottery-gambling,  98,  105,  106. 
Love  of  liberty  as  motive  for 

emigration,  14,  46,  47,  145, 

169,  297-299. 
Lying,  Italians,  117;  Hebrews, 

150;  Levantines,  193;  South 

Europeans,  293. 

Macedonians,  123,  175. 
Machine,    the    political,  229, 

261-263,  269-275. 
Mafia,  the,  107. 
Magyar,  immigrants,  33,  34,  61, 

168,  169,  173-175,  198,  202, 

207,  208  220,  225,  238,  243. 
Malaria,  ravages  of,  19-20. 
Male  ascejidencv,  129-134,  180, 

193,  219,  235^237. 
Manners,  Irish,  40;  Germans, 

53-54,    64 ;  Scandinavians, 

80,  82-83,  89;  Italians,  118; 

Hebrews,     149-150;  Slavs, 

228. 

Marine  disasters,  race  behavior 

in,  295-296. 
Maryland,  convicts  transported 

to',  8. 

Mechanical  aptitude,  want  of  in 
Italian  immigrants,  113;  in 
Greeks,  187. 


INDEX 


325 


Medicine,  immigrants  in,  Irish, 

35,  39,  41;  Germans,  35,  41; 

Hebrews,  148. 
Mediterranean   race,   the,  97- 

101,  293-295. 
Merit  s'^stem,  the,  42,  57,  261- 

262.  ' 
Michaux,  quoted,  21. 
Middle  Ages,  our,  133-136,  228- 

230,  232,  254-255,  279-280. 
Mining,,  immigrants  in,  35,  74, 

125,  207,  208,  213,  214-216, 

228. 

Mining  conditions  in  West  Vir- 
ginia, 214-215. 

Mittelberger,  quoted,  18. 

Mixed  marriages,  166. 

Mongolian  immigrants,  168- 
175. 

Morals,  34,  64-65,  72,  90-91, 
101,  105-106,  117,  129,  149- 
155,  169,  180-181,  193,  238, 
255,  293-295. 

Mortality,  immigrant,  17-20, 
30,  71,  113,  126,  130-134, 
136,  189,  234,  244,  263,  273- 
274,  291-292. 

Municipal  Government,  229 ; 
Irish  in,  259-263;  foreign- 
born  in,  269-275. 

Music,  immigrant  contribution 
to,  50,  54,  62,  90,  103,  138, 
279. 


Naturalization,  extent  of,  264- 
266. 

Naturalization  frauds,  272-273. 

Natural  selection,  14-23,  61, 
145,  290,  292. 

Neapolitans,  98-101,  105-106, 
107,  113,  117-118,  243. 

New  Bedford  whalers,  176,  179. 

New  York,  insane  of,  249,  250. 

New  York  State  Hospital  Com- 
mission, quoted,  249. 

Niceforo,  Professor,  cited,  98- 
101. 

Norwegian  immigrants,  68,  69, 
73,  74,  75,  76,  80,  82-83. 

Nationalism,  revival  of  Slavic, 
134-135. 


Occupational  preferences,  Irish, 
35-36  ;  German,  62-63  ;  Scan- 
dinavian, 73-75;  Italian, 
102-104;  Slavic,  124-127; 
Hebrew,  31;  146-148;  Fin- 
nish, 169;  Magyar,  174;  Por- 
tuguese, 179-180;  Greek,  184- 
188;  Levantine,  193;  for- 
eign-born, 202-203. 

Oriental  traits,  190,  193,  237. 

Oversea  passage,  conditions  of, 
17-18,  196. 

Padrone,  the,  188-190,  272. 

Parks,  abuse  of,  149. 

Parties,  immigrants  and  polit- 
ical, 54-57,  66,  76,  91,  117, 
158,  170,  261-263. 

Patriotism,  136,  170,  251,  269. 

Pauperism,  Irish,  29;  Germans, 
59;  Scandinavians,  59;  He- 
brew, 149;  Portuguese,  180; 
natives,  209 ;  foreign-born, 
240-245. 

Peasantism,  135-137;  181-182, 
228-233,  237,  254-256,  286, 
292. 

Pecorini,  quoted,  112. 
Penal  transportation,  8. 
Penn,  William,  10,  17. 
Pennell,  Joseph,  quoted,  146. 
Pennsylvania  Germans,  10-12, 
52,  298. 

Peonage    among  immigrants, 

233-234. 
"Personal  liberty,"  53,  76,  276, 

279. 

Physiognomy  of  immigrants, 
85,  113,  285-289. 

Pioneer  breed,  the,  20-23,  282, 
290,  300. 

Polish  immigrants,  124,  126, 
127,  133,  135-137,  139-140, 
181,  207,  208,  220,  230,  236, 
238,  244,  252,  253,  275,  291. 

Political  mysticism,  280-281. 

Political  psychology  of  races, 
40-42,  66,  91-92,  119,  194, 
261-262,  294-296. 

Political  tendencies  of  natural- 
ized immigrants ;  of  Irish, 
39,  41,  42;  of  Germans,  47, 


326 


INDEX 


54-55,  66;  of  Scandinavians, 
76,  83,  91-92;  of  Italians, 
119;  of  Slavs,  136;  of  He- 
brews, 144,  148,  158,  279;  of 
Finns,  170;  of  Levantines, 
194;  of  foreign-born,  229- 
230,  232,  255-256,  259-281. 

Polyandry,  180-181,  238. 

Portuguese  immigrants,  105, 
175-182,  202,  236,  289. 

Prejudice  in  politics,  203. 

Presbyterian  immigrants,  12- 
13. 

Press,  the  foreign,  50,  135,  146, 

156,  276. 
Pride,  Magjar,  173,  174. 
Prostitutes'    immigrant,  155, 

156,  104. 
Public  service,  Irish  in  the,  35- 

39,  259-262;  Hebrews,  148. 
Puritans,  3-4,  19,  54,  57,  76, 

163,  238,  297. 
Pytheas,  quoted,  72. 

Quakers,  10,  11,  13. 

Race  suicide,  133-134,  299-304. 
Raisin    pacliers,  displacement 

of  American,  303. 
Religion,  immigrants  and,  39, 

46,  47,  57,  71,  82,  90,  135, 

137,  157,  166,  182,  237,  252, 

253. 

Retardation  of  school  children, 
98,  114,  119,  139,  158,  181. 

Roman  Catholic  policy,  136, 
182,  251-254. 

Royalists,  migration  of,  to  Vir- 
ginia, 7. 

Russia,  as  source  of  immi- 
grants, 140,  144-145,  169. 

Russo-Jewish  immigi'ation,  144- 
146. 

Ruthenian  immigrants,  124, 
128,  236. 

Sabbath  keeping,  166. 

Saloon    keepers,  foreign-born, 

35,  36,  73.  Ill,  127,  137,  255, 

272,  275-276. 
Saracen  blood,  97,  168. 
Scandinavian   immigrants,  67- 

92;    numbers,   67;  distribu- 


tion, 68,  69;  social  character- 
istics, 70-72;  criminality, 
72;  alcoholism,  72-73;  occu- 
pations, 44,  7.3-75;  202,  260; 
assimilation,  75-79 ;  reaction 
to  America,  79-81;  national 
contrasts,  81-83;  intellectual 
ability,  83-85,  298;  traits, 
32,  42,  43,  85-92,  263,  294. 

School,  immigrants  and  the 
church.  136,  137,  182,  251- 
254,  256,  279,  280. 

School,  immigrants  and  the 
public,  79,  93,  112,  114,  119, 
136,  139,  158,  159,  170,  181, 
182,  246,  250-254,  256,  279- 
280,  303. 

SciencBj  immigrants  in,  39,  58, 
66,  81,  148. 

Scotch  immigrants,  12,  70,  298. 

Scotch-Irish  immigrants,  12-13, 
298. 

Servants,  indentured,  7-8. 

Servians,  123,  124,  134,  175. 

Servitude  of  Greek  boot-blacks, 
188-190. 

Sexes,  proportion  of  the,  70,  96, 
124.  14.5,  169,  174,  179,  183, 
237-238. 

"Sexual  hospitality,"  180-181. 

Shoe-shining  parlors,  Greek, 
187-190. 

Shrine,  a  miracle-working,  232. 

Sicilian  immigrants,  101,  107, 
118,  119. 

Slavic  immigrants;  race,  120- 
123,  173;  groups,  123-124; 
qualitv,  174,  299;  occupa- 
tions,'124-127,  207,  208.  210, 
213,  215,  216,  220;  alcohol- 
ism, 33,  127-129,  229; 
crime,  72,  129;  fecundity, 
129-134,  303;  assimilation, 
134-138,  239;  in  agriculture. 
126,  127,  203;  abilitv,  138- 
139.  246;  future,  139-140; 
traits,  34,  219,  243,  244,  252, 
254,  289,  291  292. 

Slovak  immigrants,  86,  124, 
130.  137.  208,  238,  252,  253. 

Sociabilitv,  32,  40-^2,  64.  82, 
89-90  i  17-1 18,  194,  261-262. 


INDEX 


327 


Social  decline,  127,  133-138, 
145,  155-157;  228-230,  254- 
256. 

Social  evil,  the,  34,  107,  129, 
150,  153,  155-157,  164,  174, 
175,  180-181,  228,  237-238, 
245,  274. 

Socialism,  40,  66,  82,  159,  160, 
170. 

Social  pressure,  rise  of,  222- 
226. 

South,  the ;   Germans  in,  49 ; 

attitude     toward  Italians, 

104;  political  spirit,  263. 
Spanish-American  colonies,  14. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  quoted,  288. 
Split-family    immigration,  96, 

124,  137,  174,  238. 
Sports,  immigrants  in  athletic, 

43,  63,  90,  289,  290. 
Standards,    contrast    of,  216, 

300-303. 
Stature  of  immigrants,  63,  98, 

101,  102,  126,  289. 
Steerage  traffic,  volume  of,  197. 
"Sterility,"  American,  299-304. 
Strike-breakers,  immigrants  as, 

207,  208,  219,  236. 
Survival  of  the  fittest,  17-21, 

290-292. 
Swedish  immigrants,  68,  72,  73, 

74,  75,  76,  81,  82,  83,  85,  168, 

169. 

Syrian  immigrants,  61,  176, 
190-194,  243,  289,  293. 

Tammany  Hall,  274. 

Tariff,  the  protective,  198,  201. 

Teachers  of  foreign  stock,  36, 

43,  75,  89,  148,  254. 
Team  work,  108,  294,  295. 
Temperance  Finns,  170. 
Thomas,  Professor,  quoted,  129. 
Trachoma,  190. 

Trade,  immigrants  in,  65,  86, 
103,  144-148,  150-153,  159, 
184-187,   190,  193. 


Trade  immorality,  150-153. 

Trade  unionism,  209-210. 

Trickiness,  150-155. 

Tuberculosis,  among  the  Scan- 
dinavian immigrants,  71. 

Teutonic  traits,  29,  32,  35,  41, 
42,  44,  63-66,  81,  91,  160  262, 
293,  295. 

"United  Societies,"  the,  276. 

United  States  Steel  Corpora- 
tion, 210. 

Universities,  immigrants'  child- 
ren in,  39,  79,  81,  148,  170, 
236. 

Veracity,  Norwegians,  83 ; 
North  Europeans,  293. 

Violence,  tendency  to,  33,  98- 
99,  105-111,  118-119,  128, 
129,  136,  169-70,  175,  193. 

Virginia,  peopling  of,  4-9. 

Von  Hupka,  quoted,  130. 

Wages,  effect  of  immigrants  on, 
210-213. 

Walker,  Francis  A.,  quoted,  300. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  quoted,  255. 

Wergeland,  Dr.,  quoted,  80. 

West,  influence  of  the,  21-23. 

Wife  desertion,  34,  255. 

Will,  strength  of,  13,  163. 

Women,  position  of  immigrant, 
40,  47,  52,  103,  128,  129-134, 
136,  149,  170,  180,  190,  193, 
219,  235-237,  255,  295,  303. 

Woods,  quoted,  22. 

Wood's  Eun,  239. 

Work  conditions,  immigrants 
and,  214-219. 

Yellow  journalism  and  immi- 
gration, 233. 


Zangwill,  quoted,  144. 


JV6455  .R82 

The  Old  world  in  the  New;  the 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1  1012  00140  9483 


